letter

Dear Stinger:

You said today that no one knows love except you. We don't know it but you're here to tell us. You are like Moses. Or Socrates. And you have a message. That message is: I cannot convey to you what you think you know, except that you don't really know it. Did this disturb no one else but me? Everyone scoffed the dust of your message away. It was so easy to dismiss. But the more I defend you the more I am pulled in. And now I've worked myself into a whirlpool of disturbance. I am deeply worried by your preposterous claims. Like your hero and mine, you have put me in a state of aporia. Stung me and flown away. You fly away unharmed, back to the side of your lover, I suppose. And I'm left with an insect sting, the locus of pain slowly traveling outwards. You would be pleased, because you've already found the antidote, and so you get out safe and sound, while I sit here examining the small puncture in my skin.

Why is it that only I felt this effect? Like a honeybee, you had only one sting, and I was the recipient. How did everyone else manage to get away sting free? You want to know what I think? I think it's because you and I are the same. We are selfish people who want to be loved. We are selfish because we think no one is like us. We think more about ourselves than anyone else, because we think we're the most interesting. Unselfish people do not have this problem. And selfish people who do not need to be loved do not have this problem. But we have this problem. You said we love a particular. And you are right, I do love a particular, and I have given her so much analysis that her particular is more and more apparent to me the more I fall. And I might never find this particular in anyone else, and so I might never love another, and so I might never be loved. And here is what you said to me today: "I have found someone to love me. And because of it, I know the odds are even slimmer than we have imagined. Today, I dig the hole you are in a little deeper, after that, I will fly upwards and outwards while you look on in your winglessness and jealousy. Today, I am leaving you." I watch you with so much fascination I don't realize I am watching alone. I wish you hadn't done that. I wish you hadn't done that to me.

Love, (isn't it ironic how that word sounds now?)

Me