“How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude….”

To N, who in her search for ‘good’ silence, found it.

I began this endeavor quite a while ago at your request. My motives at the time were far from clear, far from pure. I think you knew that, but then, too, perhaps you didn’t think I would take the ring you offered me. Perhaps you didn’t think that you would ever be free of him to even think of us, you and me, together again.

And here we are.

I know what echoes in your head. Likely the same thoughts that sound in my own. We are nothing alike, but we are a matched pair. Ying and Yang, to be trite, but less stark than that image would suggest, where the edges of your white bleed together with my black. Yet we are still two, distinct, stubborn people.

I began this task at your request. And now I suspend it. Perhaps you have gotten contented with my voice being here that you failed remember your own. At this point, I don’t care what reasons you have. I heard the distinct challenge in your tone and I answer it with this action.

I will not post here for a month. You won’t have my voice here. You won’t have it as a warm blanket to comfort you when I am not around. Instead, this post will be your company. This post will be your reminder of the cold silence that awaits you.

And you know love, that the cold makes a deeper cut.

If I post before this time next month, it will be because your apology, written out and exquisitely detailed, rests in my hands. ….and they will know it as well.

Until then.

-D

“…But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper–Solitude is sweet.” - Cowper