Page 385 of Face Off

Now it is also home.

Briggs lives six doors away. I know which streets remain clear after heavy snow, where to find decent mezcal, and which bookstore employees will set aside old editions before they reach the shelves. The Inferno trusts me. My teammates know me. The building staff has stopped pretending not to notice how often I check the mail.

I built a life here.

I want you to see it because if you ever come to Milwaukee, I don’t want you entering a monument to my suffering.

I want you to enter the home I made after it.

The shirtless photograph was included for academic purposes.

Study it carefully.

No written analysis is required.

My mouth curves as I imagine her reaching that sentence.

One final page remains.

John Donne wrote of lovers separated by distance and compared their souls to the two legs of a compass. One remains fixed while the other travels, but the fixed point leans toward the one moving and ensures it returns to where it began.

“Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.”

I used to read that as a declaration that one person must remain still while the other wanders.

I understand it differently now.

The fixed point isn’t trapped.

It becomes orientation.

Both pieces move in relation to each other. Distance stretches between them without breaking the connection, and neither can complete the circle alone.

I don’t know which of us is fixed anymore.

Maybe neither of us should be.

I only know every road I have taken still curves toward you.

This isn’t a request for you to hurry. It isn’t another question you need to answer before you are ready.

It is only love.

Uncomplicated in the middle of everything else.

I love you, Charm.

I loved you while leaving because staying would have destroyed whatever remained of us. I loved you while hating what you did. I loved you in Milwaukee, at the castle, inside every letter, and through every day I told myself love couldn’t be reason enough to return.

It still isn’t.

Love is the reason I am willing to discover whether trust can become one.

Keep the jersey.

Keep the sculpture.