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Dear Soel,

I have started this letter four times in the last two years and not finished any of them. I am trying again.

There is something I see when I look at you that I don't know how to describe without it sounding like I am being sentimental, which I know you will not appreciate. I am going to try anyway.

When you do certain things, not all things, specific things, the ones that cost you something, there is a quality of light around you that I can only call luminous. It is not a metaphor. It is a thing I see. Other people see it too, I think, though we have never compared notes. It is why strangers slow down. It is why the children in the building always seem to find you.

I do not think you know this. I have watched you carefully for eleven years and I have never seen any evidence that you can perceive it yourself. You give and then you shrug and change the subject, which is the move of someone who does not know what they are doing to the air around them.

I am writing this because I want you to know, and also because I want to understand why I have not told you in person. I think it is this: I am not sure what you would do with it. You might find it useful, or you might find it intrusive, or you might simply not believe me. You are level and practical and I love this about you. But this is not the kind of information that a level and practical person knows what to do with.

So I am writing it down instead, which is cowardly but feels like the right kind of cowardly. I wanted the information to exist somewhere besides only in me.

You brought soup again last week. Your hands in the afternoon light. I said thank you. I didn't say the rest of this.