I’m never so astonished, in good and bad ways, as I am by this lovely, confounding creature. She, alone, in my life has been a steady source of the most sublime inspiration and gut-twisting disappointment. Almost complete, impenetrable shroud to my detection and utterly unfathomable to my senses… In spite of my best efforts, I cannot get a fix on her.

My best connections with her happen when I don’t expend any effort. Only when I am still and silent, ready only for listening, can I even hope for the most fragile flicker of attachment from her. So I tether my jerky reactions, still my quivering hopes and muzzle my judgments, doubts and fears and… exhale, hoping against hope for a bond.

I feel it forming sometimes like the slightly ugly, throbbing, over-nerved growth of new skin over a tender wound. It feels temporary – so, so vulnerable, in that tenuous stage before it becomes solidly part of the flesh. I bury the thought that it might only ever be temporary and volatile, a wary hope stubborn in the face of all my experience.

She’s the one I’m at most danger of losing… but to react on that prejudice with single-minded pursuit would place all my other relationships at risk. So… I bury it away, too, choking the fear in my voice box, unable to say, maybe, the things she needs most to hear…

“Don’t leave me. You’re one of my horcruxes. I’ve hidden a part of my self with you. If you kill that part of me… I’m closer to real death.”

These words, though – “I love you” – spring as easily to my mouth as saliva at the thought of food.