At the corner of "no" and "maybe"

You will never read this (unless I forget to delete it, of course).

It will be gone before I give you the key that unlocks this door.

And if we continue to get to know each other, you aren't going to show up here a lot.

I sense your openness.

Willingness to take the next step.

Interest in getting to know me better.

We have a lot in common -- more than in most such chance encounters.

Your intellect more formidable, perhaps, than mine -- always a humbling, but exciting, experience.

Your emotional intelligence.

A global perspective nurtured by travel and reading.

Lack of antipathy for a faith you do not share, but can find in analogy, in poetry, in metaphor.

So much to offer -- potentially.

And yet I am aware, as we crack the door open, what it is that, soon, I will say to you.

You need time. Space. Freedom. You need not, must not, even if the conditions are favorable, fall for me -- at least not now.

How strange, and how damnable, that I should once again find myself playing the worldly-wise, the detached, the rueful...I'm so good at rue.

Shall I watch? Shall I wait? Shall I open myself to the possibility that my heart shall, once again, be shredded?

Shall I trust that better conditions may produce a better outcome?

I don't know what occurs afterward, but I do know how the first act ends.

A woman sits across from a man somewhere...and sends him out to explore his new world, with her blessing. She walks out alone, at least for now.

The logical question after that is: will there be a second act?