Impossible.

Isn't it impossible for you to follow the scent of your errant desire because you have a husband?

Impossible? No. There could be a different ending to this story, one steeped in rage and sorrow and regret. A moment of passion surely, I have lived it in the twilight space every night before sleep. I relive it when I fantasise. I have abandoned the safe but soulless trawl for pornography on the Internet for now. I have a headier drug to see me through, my daily fantasies that have made the dream more real to me, made the urge more urgent yet.

It would not be impossible, unlikely maybe, but not impossible.

But I count the losses and they are troubling, the loss of honesty first, and I am a creature made from razor sharp honesty, slicing the skin of my friends, glinting with multiple truths. I would blunt myself in the lying. I would lose my edge. The loss of something beautiful. My love. The simple clean respect we have for each other. The long quiet care. We are each a mystery to each other and yet it seems to work best this way, our differences draw us closer and remind us that our opinions are not the only opinions that matter.

I would also lose the sex. Although I bemoan the frequency I do not doubt the quality. We have made something together that is an indulgence in pure joy. Quick mostly, full of laughter and tenderness and most importantly lust. There are patterns that we find comfortable, but an endless palette for variation to practice in between. There is nothing wrong with the sex and I would long for it if it were to be taken away. There is also the visual gift he brings me every morning when he takes off his clothes, every evening climbing into bed. The little electric shock I feel when I turn and catch sight of him and realise that he is still beautiful, more beautiful. He is exquisite and his beauty is a fine and wonderful thing and it is gifted to me.

Another loss, not an insignificant one would be our friendship. This is the thing that I crave most from you. Not the passion that I dream of, not the reciprocation of that passion although, of course, it would feel nice to be lusted after just a little. I am eaten away a little fish nip at a time by the idea that your friendship is brief and fleeting and thinned out by an equal fondness for almost anyone else you meet. If there was ever an exchange of passion between us, even this thin oil slick of care would be gone. We would retreat from it. We would feel exhausted by even a hint of what we once shared.

I continue to edge up to the line and to reach my toe over it, testing the waters in a different pond, the pond where you are, playful as a dolphin, darting from friend to friend.

Is it impossible then? No. Maybe not impossible, but improbable, and no, it will not move into anything that could not be told in a chaste sentence. My hopes for it are simple. We will hug. We will lie side by side and gaze up at a clear sky and touch like children do, an easy tangle of arms and bodies and laughter. I dream that we will be able to lie and hug in a kind of familial way. I will slowly feel more confidant of your friendship, the oil thickening, the insecurities abating. I want to know that I have become somehow important to you.

No perhaps we both know this is not about sex, but about intimacy. I have found the love of my life and that is not diminished by the love for a friend, a confidante, and if I complicate the purity of it with sexual longing, then that is just me tiptoeing over the line, shaking my life around, keeping the edge on it. Truly I just want an intimate friend and at the moment I hope it is you.

So you tell me, nothings impossible, and now, I suppose it isn't.