The Gentleman's Plight:

Dearest Love,
      
      For years I have held myself back. I have shrunk into myself when you were near for fear of forcing my affections upon you, and you frightening away because of it.
     I have done this in private as well as in public, hiding you--my deepest of desires--in the back of my mind because even the hope of what I knew could never be was too painful to bear. It has been years since first I saw you and loved you, but the ache of you has never left as I prayed for my own sake it would. I think I knew very little of myself then to hope to forget you--to forget the pain of loving you--but I understand myself now. Now after all these years of growing pain I know I am nothing but yours--even in death if the passing years demand it. 
      A thousand times over I have written this letter, and a thousand times over I have ripped it to shreds knowing the words were not right--knowing you would never read them. Even now, as I write this, I can never know if it will reach you, but, pray, if it does, let it not reach your eyes to read it, nor your ears to hear, but let it reach your heart and end my torture.
      For torture it is: never before have I known the degradation one word could bear until I have been called "friend" by you. Be it as a truth, the word was once one of felicity in childhood, yet with each time you  have directed the word at me, it rings in my ears as though laced with disdain as fatal to my heart as poison. 
      As many times as I have written this letter, I have wanted to abandon my plight. Love, I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to leave this my hometown and never return for I have reasoned it is better to live without love at all than to have love and merely be a friend.
      There. I have said what I would. Take it as you may, but know this: be not swayed in your actions toward me, for I have seen the fallacy of my thinking. I have told you I have tried to leave, yet never left. Have you not wondered what has held me back? It has been the impossible hope of you--the sweetness of your torture.

          Enduringly yours, 
             Your ever faithful 'friend'. 


Thomas thought at the final result.
Too forceful.
He crumpled it and threw it aside.