“All I really want … are your words. Talk to me. What do you want to tell me?“

“No matter how much attention he paid, though, the day was unscalable; and like a dot drawn atop another dot, the voice of the cricket was the cricket’s own body, and told you nothing.”

The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector

We ask nothing of each other. Is that right? Or should it be “for nothing?”

Shall we find out? I’d written a couple of million words by the time I stopped. And that was ten years ago. Maybe we can explore how that made me feel together. These words will be for you. You’ll be my shepherd.

Strange things happen when the world becomes less literary, it’s examined less in combinations of words and more … no, that’s unfair, not the world. I became less literary. It felt wrong continuing to conjure the words I needed to explain myself to myself, and myself to myself in the world as the world as I perceived it to be, unless those words were fixed. I didn’t think it was healthy at the time, but I think I was wrong.

Whether it was my place in the world that became quiet I can’t say, but I stopped “talking” to myself about it. I withdrew from words and ceased building things. It leaves you feeling unprotected, incomplete. The idea of being without a voice probably sounds great in Latin, you should remind me to look it up.

nb: let me cut in here and just say, if you feel I should or need to elaborate on something, just … you know (we’ll work that out too). How not writing fucks up writers, should definitely be on it. Nota bene.

Words/wheels?

I can hear seven words: “[w]hat do you want to tell me?” I can hear them whispered. You’re close.

You ask again, but the words are changed. Maybe I know they’re not, but what “do [I] want?

“What do you need to tell me?”

I can tell they’re not whispered anymore. I should ask you to repeat it, but you know I heard you: your mouth warms my ear. If I opened my eyes I’d know you’d know, “tell me” you’ll say.

It’s for nothing already, we have everything, already.

“What do you need?“

There’ve been too many letters unsent, and nights shared from distance haunting us to need need. But still, there’s the unshared world we explore alone. Should it ever be shared? Is it safe? Would it lessen the possession? Would mine be so different from yours? Would the fucking?

I would hope so, but God, we were so alike. And I needn’t spill either sentiment without knowing there’s comfort in the fear that feels as though it should ache more, linger longer, and belong somewhere, to someone else.

A little difference is a challenge to the life a little less perfect, don’t you think?

What do I want to tell you?

Everything. Of course.

It’s why my ear is still warm, it’s why I know, that you know, that you need to know what I need to tell you.

—JustD

*The image is Vassily Kandinsky’s, Composition 7 (1913)