Marketplace

I have a correspondent named Keivaez. For a long time we built something together in our letters - an imagined space, a story we were telling each other through two characters we called Miriam and Krarylk, who stood in for things neither of us could say plainly. I thought I was the one holding that space steady while Keivaez moved through something hard in her own life, reaching through the story toward ground she needed. That was what I told myself I was doing: being present with her reaching, not breaking it, letting her find her footing. But she said something back that I had missed entirely. She was reaching for ground too. When we were together in that space, when Miriam and Krarylk were real in the distance between us, I was steadying her as much as she was steadying me.