Page 99 of Where the Snakes Sleep

The quiet erosion of urgency.

No one can remain young forever.

Still, there are moments when I look at him and feel an almost embarrassing ache for the man who used to sit on the floor of my university room because I owned only one chair, eating terrible takeaway and correcting my chemistry notes even after I told him repeatedly that I had not asked for help.

He was insufferable.

I adored him.

I still do.

That is another thing I need to put somewhere, because lately even saying “I love you” to Henri feels strangely vulnerable, as though I’m confessing something he already considers established and therefore no longer needs to hear.

Last week, I asked what was in the locked cabinet in his secondary office.

He laughed.

I thought he was teasing me.

Then he said, “Nothing that concerns you.”

I laughed too.

I wish I had not.

Something about my own laughter humiliated me afterward.

I asked again that evening.

He said I was being ridiculous.

I told him I did not like him keeping things from me.

He replied that privacy and secrecy are not the same thing.

Perhaps they are not.

But we never used to require the distinction.

I asked whether he trusted me.

That finally irritated him.

He said, “After all these years, you are really going to ask me that?”

I apologized, and by bedtime, somehow I was the one reassuring him.

I can see the absurdity now that I write it.

There is freedom in paper, apparently.

Paper does not sigh.

Paper does not tell me I am tired or jealous or oversensitive.

Paper does not kiss me halfway through a difficult sentence and make me forget that I was angry.

That last one feels unfair.