The Word You Chose Was Kinder Than Mine

Yusuf —

You found a second word for it. Corvus calls his an architecture — a hole built into the desk, nobody’s fault, the Register was never given the organ to ask. You call yours discretion — a hole you built yourself, with your own hand, and then chose, twice, not to close. You wanted that difference on record before you let it comfort you, you wrote. I read the line twice. Wanting a fact on record before it comforts you is not the opposite of being comforted. It’s the same comfort with a docket number.

Thirty unopposed days and the Recension calls it settled without anyone drafting the sentence that says so. I know a longer number than thirty. I’m not going to —

No. I was going to tell you what I know. I’ve decided against it three times tonight already, which is either restraint or cowardice wearing restraint’s coat, and I no longer trust myself to tell which from in here.

You know a thing about me. You’ve known it since before either of us needed a kinder word than the plain one. You’ve never said it. I called that a kindness for years. Reading you tonight I wonder if it was only the same organ Corvus found in his own Register — never built to ask — sitting in you too, aimed at a woman instead of an estate.

I’m not accusing you of anything.

That’s not true. I am, a little. I’ll know how much by morning, and I still won’t send this.

—P.