Tuesday, May. 13, 2003 - 8:43 p.m.

This is written in light of B., but not to her. A sight or thought may provoke the re-appearance of an already-too-long-gone yearning, but being an effect, there would have been a cause preceding it. Or so I do believe. In any case, so it was with her whom I saw yesterday. These words are literally my effects, and she who inspired them, however slightly, the cause.

"Come to the concert", she said. Or was it less a directive and more a question? She asked me twice, once to commence our conversation and once at the parting, and each time I held back a reply that produced, would have struck anyone within earshot as grave and sententious, but also buttressed with irreverence:

"I will come, if you would like me to. Just say the word." Seriousness does not become me; deep conversation is a source of giggles, and not a furrowed brow. But that passivity, surrender: my natural proclivity towards doing the bidding of others, ostensibly (and foolishly) without a regard for the personal cost accrued until it is too late - it lights alive again. Yet I have spoken an untruth. I will not do the bidding of just any one person or thing, or mind, where I may find it.

I act for a face. I may act to preserve mine, but most probably it will be for yours. I agree with you not to be able to touch your lips with mine, but because I want to see your lower one pull back into a smile. I want your happiness to be in captivity for a while, unbeholden to the arc of the moon, the toll of a bell, the words of a prophet. I want to see you alone, so I agree, and hope that your happiness will take you away from everyone and onto my primrose path.

I act slowly, enough so that I can trace the modulations of your voice. I act so that each of your moments spent with me no longer scowls at me with distaste, or grimaces with surprise. You would be more than merely piqued if you noticed that your frothings of enthusiasm have for me the quality of a Pavolvian response. The attachments are clean, the chain leads only in one direction. I am tentative, enough so that you believe that each step taken together is taken for the first time. I offer to lead you to an undiscovered country, leaving you with no idea that I mean the Hades of my heart. The first moments of our passion will be a consummation of fire upon paper: I will envelop you, then suddenly retrieve the seal. You are left with the memory of my ring.

I am a coward. I know that I can move you to elation with a few sudden adjustments of my face next to yours. But I am afraid of keeping it there for too long, afraid that I myself might be blinded, stunted by the power of your will. Are you one of Rilke's angels?

I move on, touching everything, keeping nothing, my heart a solemn repository of aborted days unspent together.

Troilus

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