yeah, so, i miss you.

it's been so long.

and you haven't called. not once.

i mean, i don't even know where you live these days. as you said, or said in so many unspoken words, it could be anywhere.

i figured i would at least hear your voice after i left that message announcing the death of my wife, and the upcoming memorial service, which i asked you to speak at. knowing, as i do, how you have this way with these words.

two days passed and nothing and that's when i understood the depths of this silence.

and i wonder whether you ever knew.

sometimes it takes such forced exaggerations (and, honestly, outright lies) to carry you, however briefly, into our light.

you told me once that someone told you that something was wrong, or off, about you. that when confronted with the possibilities of living intimately you shut down, turned off, did whatever the term is for suddenly not caring or even so much listening. it's probably german, that term, because they have such perfectly complex single words for experiences like these.

i mean, you don't even remember the last thing you wrote to me. or the thing you wrote before that. and posted on the internet, for whatever misguided reason.

which was beautiful, all of it, really, scattershot and lovelorn and altogether wrong for the time and the day and the weather, but beautiful nevertheless.

later, when i asked you, you said you remembered it well. you nodded your head while avoiding eye contact (as you always do) and said, oh, sure, i remember that.

i never called you out on it. i should have. but of course i never will.

listen:

what are you doing?

where are you?

and what are you doing where you are?

and why?

and why aren't you here?

with me?

or with anyone, even?

not that you'll ever answer any of these questions, not even when i try to deceive you by asking one, and then asking a second, and then combining them both into a third. because i know you. better than you will ever know yourself, better than you will ever know us, better than you will ever clearly see every bathroom and bedroom and interstate rest stop we have seen together and at times experienced as one.

yeah, so, i miss you.

there. i said it.

not that you listen to such things.

i put up some new photos the other day. bet you'll hardly recognize me. or my child. you should see her hair, near down past her neck now, you should see the way she walks, with this power and confidence to send boardroom members stepping backward heel to heel. though she still trips, still stumbles, sometimes it's just a step or two and she's back again with her face in the sand, but what you're not here to see is how afterward she stands again with such grace, steps again and aglow with no recollection of ever falling before.

you should listen to how she talks. because there's nothing more pure than an incoherent sentence expressed with the most honest of want.

this, i think, is something you could appreciate. were you here to see it.

were you to answer your phone one of these days.

were you to write back to my letter one of these days.

but listen:

i don't expect you to. i don't want you to, if you don't. go. disappear. emerge somewhere else, whether closer or farther from here. i want only to love you with every cell passing uninterrupted through this body i carry, and give each to you as you need them to continue along your restless path.

so go.

get lost.

you want this, though you believe you don't need it.

know, because i've so often tried to tell you and listened as you've parsed what you believe to be my failures, that nothing but this is real: no one can tell you truth but you.

it's a failure, sure.

but at least it's yours and only yours to carry.

or let go of.

i don't say goodbyes. don't believe in them. and not because you don't.

but because i have this idea that you'll discover yet the circular path that the better of us have walked. it grows. always larger. and always returning.

you won't remember reading this. you won't remember what i already know you will write in response. you won't remember our words and you won't remember our actions. you probably won't even remember your dreams. or ours.

but believe, please, in the path.

and try, tomorrow, to see your steps.

if even one.