Ambiguous

You can’t put a definitive on anything dead. I know that, I know. We have giant question marks at the end of every sentence and learn every movement our muscles make when rolling the word ‘unknown’.

May be, presumably, allegedly, thought to.

Apparently, seemingly, maybe so.

But I want them to know.

When centuries in the future they’ll maybe find what I wrote, I want them to be sure it was not brotherly love that I was hunching over a page for, tear stains and left-handed smudges blurring my words.

And that when they’ll look at us, the way we spoke, any letter we wrote, we

could not have been brothers and we could not have been advisors, close

friends, ladies in waiting or anything else less than lovers.

They cannot say it was for sure, as not even the most studied artefacts of the earth are awarded the luxury of certainty, but they'll know.

Like the words of the tenth muse Sappho to her lover, studied and admired by the emperors and philosophers, they'll know.

Like the two men in Modena found buried with their hands intertwined, they'll be sure.

Tomàs Acquistapace