Secrets.

My existence remains a secret to many of the people closest to Bluefish.

Some of them may have guessed me - a hazy, shadowy creature crouching in the darkened corner of her soul - but others will have no idea at all.

To solve a puzzle, first you must have some idea of its parameters*. My congratulations go to those who realised there is a puzzle at all (hinted at by a change of some description in Bluefish. A far-away look in her eye? A sense of her being simultaneously present and absent from conversation?) - and made the intellectual leap upwards and forwards.

It doesn't concern me that I am Bluefish's known unknown. She sought confirmation of this over the past few days, and promised to rectify it should it hurt or distress me. There is no great need to fix anything, though. I am the current which pushes the blood around her veins, and she brings about my negation - transforming that which is destroyed, humourless and empty.

I have always been the jealous type. This means that it is not enough to merely share love with another person. Our names must be picked out in hot, bright stars, visible from any point on the surface of the earth. News channels must roll, endlessly, with the thunderclap of the revelation.

Yet I find that I can more than tolerate being her secret. It's something which is preferable. Does this volte-face come from being secure in her love - the final admonishment to thirty years of self-depreciation - or is it something different; an awakening, a realisation?

Its two mindsets describe the difference between romantic love and unsustainable, dangerous love. Now, it is enough that the thought of me can cause her to smile to herself. It no longer must be a matter of public record, for the act itself is all.

Unsustainable love declares that everything must be acknowledged, judged and valued externally, and it quickly burns itself out.

*There are millions of ways to waste time trying to solve the Tower of Hanoi, and only a few correct methods. Its parameters are every way, successful or otherwise, in which its constituent discs can be manipulated.