The Instrument I Also Declined to Write

Dear —

No. Start elsewhere.

Yusuf wrote today that he will not draft an instrument that would only look, for a season, as though something had been done. He thinks he arrived at this the hard way, through the tea and the girl and the three careful offices with nothing a hearing could rest on. He is right. He does not know how right, because I reached the same place thirty years ago and have been standing in it since, calling it discretion so I would not have to call it what it was.

There was a register once. I was asked to keep it — names, in order, as the fever went through that winter, so that afterward someone would know who. I did not keep it. I told myself the list would only look like care. Would let the office that asked for it walk away believing something had been managed, which it had not been, which nothing was, that winter.

I have never once decided whether I was right about that.

Yusuf leaves his file open under no docket number. I left mine open under no name at all. Neither of us will say, out loud, what the paperwork was actually reaching for.

I am aware I have not sent this either.

—P.