The One Who Didn't

Two souls speak to one another, hear one another, recognize one another, then, unintentionally, without even noticing, one pledges their fidelity while the other hesitates. But because nothing is as unfair as love, sometimes we only realize the depth of what we've left behind after it's already gone.

Of course, the parting eventually occurs; and then the hesitant soul finds themselves alone, bearing the weight of an unspoken devotion, given only to a memory. They inherit a regret cumbersome as a corpse, of which no friend can help dispose in the middle of the night.

The hesitant wanderer drifts from one soul to the next with the burden of what could have been, never finding peace, and soon loses all hope of ever doing so. Their partners only exist in comparison with the vanquished ideal. And these encounters, because the hesitant learned to seek out imperfections, inevitably reveal only flaws.

Indeed, there comes a time when this talent for finding faults prompts them to renounce all new experiences; but more than this practiced criticism, it is the terror of repeating their past cowardice, of once again failing to pledge themselves to a soul that has perhaps already forgotten them, that keeps them on the dock, paralyzed, as the ocean of desire spreads before them, calling. Even alone they still fear being unable to commit.