A series of messages, on a tender subject, to a tender subject, each a thousand words. The first suggests something. The second proposes it. The third qualifies the proposal. The fourth is worried that the suggestion and the qualified proposal have not been adequately addressed by the recipient. The fifth recommends a different strategy. The sixth modifies the strategy, complaining that the recipient has delayed too long to make it implementable. The seventh rejects the modified strategy, self-recriminating for having ever suggested anything. The eighth apologises for the tone of the seventh, and considers a possible plan for resuming association. The ninth, or eleventh, or seventeenth, attempts to quietly withdraw everything that's been said; I was confused, I misread the signals, I'm not ready, I can see now that it would never work, it was all in my head, the myth of you is better preserved intact than being broken by an encounter, I won't contact you again, please ignore it all, these are not the words we two should use, there are no words.
The messages might conjure some sort of melancholy, that of a predetermined tragedy perhaps, if we discover them all at once, and know that none of them ever received a reply. A set of thousands of words that have created, suggested, proposed, qualified, modified and planned something. Another set of thousands taking it apart, entirely in our absence, ignorant of our volition to interact, unstoppable, irredeemable.
Another mode of tragedy would be to read these messages, and to learn that every word had been matched by replies, but that the replies weren't received.
And - though far less fanciful than the other two - a third, far lesser mode of tragedy, if tragic at all, would be to know that every reply was promptly received and understood, endorsed and acted upon, but that things just didn't work out.
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