It can be a lot of work getting here to this blank page. It was climbing a mountain of anxiety under the power of thought, and, okay, strength. I’m not comfortable with the word courage. I mean, yes, perhaps in a pure sense it applies, but for me the word courage has a boastful connotation, and I am not comfortable with that. So I respectfully reject it.

We fuck words up, stain them with the one-two punch of judgment and connotation. Sometimes we inject them so many times with some inexplicable insidous honey-like ethereal substance, we sappitize them. Sappy, holy shit! Like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Sappiness makes me want to flee.

I’ll give you an example of a word that’s been sappitized. Darling. Darling is a beautiful word. It derives, in part, from the word, dear, defined in the New Oxford English Dictionary as, “regarded with deep affection; cherished by someone: a dear friend.” Come to think of it, in some ways, dear too has been sappitized. A full-contact kissing moment would be impossible for me in response to, “Kiss me, dear.”

I am wrong.

Just now — in the writing moment — I realized I was dead wrong.

I have experienced being deeply in love. Our beings were in as perfect alignment as two beings could be. If she had said, “Kiss me dear,” perhaps during one of those sweet-gentle holding each other moments, I would’ve kissed her in a heartbeat — with all my heart and soul.

Stunning what emerges when you write.