The Price

30 August 2011
Washington, DC

[Unsent]


Dear No Name.

      I need you to be the safe place where I can put my words; I have so many to give you. You need not answer, can keep your peace, but let me bring them, let me lay them out before you. And then, let me build a wall around them so that no one else can ever know them.

      This is what I need from you.

      And yet, who am I to talk of need? Where you're concerned, I have no right to the word "need," nor even the word "want." I might hope and dream and long, so long as I don't flinch when there is nothing in return.

      If you were wise, you would cherish this time with me. This time when I am full of words and full of wanting you to have them. It won't always be this way, No Name. One day the words will crawl back inside me and sew my lips shut behind them. One day there will be things that you will want to know, maybe even need to know, and you will find me silent -- as you are now. Will you beg me, No Name? Will you barter? What will you offer me someday for the words I would have once offered you unsought?

      In some ways, these words are all I have, my love. And so long as you have them, so long as you keep them, then you have me. But once they're gone.

      You may find that you have nothing left of me.


Toujours,
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