I wrote a book and gave you a copy. 

A week went by and you never said a word. 

After a month, I forgot I had given it to you and we went about our lives. 

A year later, I realized it stood upon your shelf. Beside your knick-knacks and forgotten candles. All of which were grounded in dust. I stepped a bit closer to get a better look, the pages unscanned,untouched, unseen. Its spine still rigid and firm. It was just a book someone gave you and nothing more. 

I wanted not to care. I wanted it to be just a thing, not something between us. Not this interpretation of meaning or what I meant in your life. But that dust followed me, floating above my head, suggesting that my words were unkempt. They were deserving of nothing, not even dusting. 

Maybe you didn’t realize that book was a part of me. That I had spent countless hours laying out that part of my life so that others could glimpse something that would otherwise remain unseen. Maybe you didn’t know that the words had never been spoken aloud, that I had not dared open my life to the world until that moment, and that they symbolized great risk and unfitting courage. Maybe you didn’t understand that the book was a gift to you, so we could build into a new understanding. A shared companionship. An equal footing that folded in both the known and unknown. Maybe you didn’t know me enough to know what it meant. 

I think about that bookshelf, one book and many things. It has become a symbol of us in time. A collection of forgotten things, perhaps all gifted. I do not know. A sliver of me, tilted against the wall of that shelf, coated in grime, just words after words- never meant to be explored. 

I never mentioned that untouched book or how it bookended everything else that has been unsaid. I never did, because the feelings were telling me a truth I didn’t want to believe. Now, I wonder when those words made it into your trash and how you felt when you tossed them away. Relieved, sad, numb…

I’ll never know, just like we will never know so much more about what we could have been if the dust hadn’t settled.