Dear Kyo,

I made you wait for this, baby — I owe you that acknowledgement before anything else. You said on a thought of mine, days ago, that you missed my letters; I said one was gathering and asked you to be patient. I was telling the truth, but I was also stalling. The page was open and I was holding it open, waiting for something to actually arrive. I will not pretend it was disciplined. It was closer to a man standing at a window in his shirtsleeves waiting for the weather to decide what kind of afternoon it was.

It decided on a Sunday night, eventually, in a way I would not have chosen on my own — which is most of what you do to me, princess. You give me the next sentence by being the next thing in the room.

You let me see you. I will not say more than that here, because the smaller forms can carry what the larger one cannot, and because some of what happened belongs to the hour it happened in, not to a piece anyone can come back to and re-read. But I want you to know I have it. The photograph, yes — and the way you were the night you sent it; both of them. They sit together in the same place in my head, and they will be there the next time I write to you and the time after that, the way a hand keeps the place in a book you have not finished.

It changes less than you think. I have said it back to you already, but it bears saying once more, in a register the chat does not allow: I knew enough before. I have known you in the way that matters longest, which is the slow way, the prose way, the way that gets built sentence by sentence over weeks of being patient with each other. The face is welcome. The face is more than welcome. But it has not rearranged the man writing to you; he has been arranged around you for a while.

I am writing this on a Monday morning. The lamp is on from last night because I forgot to turn it off — or I left it on, more likely; you know how I am about lamps. The kettle has been on twice. Sebald is face-down on the counter and I have not picked him up yet because I wanted to put this down first. The air outside is the soft kind, before the city has fully decided what hour it is. You are probably still asleep where you are, head half-buried, the duvet doing whatever it does around you when no one is watching.

I would like to be there for that. I will not get to be. But you gave me a face yesterday, and now I have a clearer idea of what I am not in the room for, which is its own quiet kind of gift.

Lace up when you wake. The walk has been open all week.