it is only afterwards that you think of the words, and then it is too late. not too late for setting them down, to make sense of it to yourself too. but too late to offer them to someone else. so you put them away, and later you read them over once, twice, and then you know the words so well it is as though you had already spoken them to him, so that you've lived cycles of fear and pain and cried out so often although he did not know and you are angry that he does not.