Sin Zapato

E,

People talk about you often. I try to remove myself from the conversation, tell myself I won’t say another word, but I almost always get caught up in it. My feelings for you, for the life and light I know you have inside you, for all the words I know you want to say, stumble out.

I have no captor.

No one understands what’s happening to you. Conjecture abounds. And those of us who care are worried.

And who am I to worry, right? Just a friend. An Other. By most’s moral standards, what lives in our connection, in the way you look at me, is inherently wrong. And maybe yes, because it lives at all, and that in its living, it potentially hurts someone else, its existence should be extinguished without further question.

But fuck that. That look is yours and it’s for me. It’s a gift. A part of you that glows. And so I believe it to be as important, as singular and sacred and worthy, as your voice.

And I’m here to tell you, in honor of that look, that voice, that thing that belongs only to you,

I am worried about you. You tell everyone you’re fine, but no one believes you. And I know the burden of unsaid words all too well.

Before being worried, I’ve been furious. For a while. The fact that our last interchange was intercepted, that your wife thought that she could somehow present herself as you, answer for you, poke around to try and catch you, catch us, in something inappropriate, lit quite a fire that burned for a long, long time.

Did she actually think I wouldn’t know it was her, behind all that verbal diarrhea? Did she think herself smarter, better, above me, yet again? She loves to cross those lines, that one. Believes herself entitled. And one fine day, she’s gonna fuck around and find out.

But that’s between her and me.

Since that episode, our circle has noticed that you barely speak anymore. Every time there’s a gathering, it begins.

“He didn’t say a word.”

“She doesn’t let him talk.”

“I think there’s something wrong.”

It seems that you’re trying to disappear behind an iron curtain of silent, compliant partner. And I find it unfathomable that one of the funniest, kindest, wittiest people I know might actually, finally disappear.

As most will wisely say, this is your choice.

And it is, no?

But I don’t believe that’s all there is to it. That it’s all that simple or inconsequential. If I were to conjecture myself, I’d say that the choices before you are close to impossible. That silence is a price you’re being forced to pay in exchange for peace.

And that is tragic.

I miss it terribly, you know. Our connection. Our wordless language. I miss exactly how hard you make me laugh. I miss knowing about you, if only from time to time.

When last we exchanged words, I felt like I’d cracked a secret code. I took a chance at touching base, this one last time, because the chatter was driving me insane. I didn’t like my own place in all of it, the helplessness of it. I wanted your words. Your input. Anything at all you might give me.

And it sounds terribly self-important, but I felt that if anyone could get through to you, get any words at all out of you, it would be me.

I’m glad I was right.

It was brief. It was simple. But it was you. Just you. Just us. In Morse code.

There’s no room for more, I know. I don’t get to be the friend who accompanies you through your life’s joys and troubles, I know. There’s nothing I can do or say to change a thing.

But I’ll be sitting right here, my soul’s mate, never too far. Should your words find their way back out into this world, I’ll be ready to catch them again, and hold them way up in the light, where they – and you – belong.