You

You cannot have failed to notice how much trust I've placed in you. I haven't told you everything, and never will. But even what I've said, relatively little, is more than I have cause to feel good about. Are you worthy of such trust? Can you keep it to yourself? Will you honor it? Do you even recognize the duty you bring upon yourself, by listening? It's not a pearls before swine thing, necessarily. I don't know you enough to make that judgment. We've never had a real conversation. A few ideas exchanged, a few comments from each of us, expressing an opinion. That's nothing. I don't know anything about you that I couldn't have been told by somebody else. I've laid my soul bare to you. I'm naked, and you're fully clothed. As it were.

Trust is earned. You have earned nothing. But faith is another matter. It takes chances. We call it trust, as I have done, but that's just an expedient. What I've done is showed you my soul, and something of my heart. I do regret it. But I've never tried to undo it. Why not? Because I keep hoping that your neglect will finally be transformed, somehow, into understanding. In a universe of infinite void, where everything is only potentials and probabilities, I still keep trying after my fashion to make contact with something other than wind and shadows. So I send out my smoke signals, beat out my codes, wishing they could be seen as something more than vapor and noise. Yeah. Trust.

I know you're there. I've heard your footfall. I've seen your shadow. I've just been too slow. Too slow. Or too afraid. Because I know of nothing more fearsome than a human hand. Nothing is colder than the light in an eye. And skin, when it does its job, is for keeping in the blood. I can't be the only one who knows this. If you know it too, well, that would explain your distance, your silence. But I ... I, I am not like that. I can be trusted. I cannot promise to love you. But I would never betray you. How can you know? If you had not been neglecting me, you would know the answer.

After this long, I don't even need love anymore. I'd settle for honesty.


J