He did not want a negotiated love.

He did not want to be believed.

He wanted to be known.

And the only way to be known, truly, was to remove the label entirely, to come to me not as a claim I had to evaluate but as a person I could simply meet, and let the loving happen first, in the open, before the past could poison it.

It was, when I finally saw it whole, not cowardice at all, whatever he called it in his letter.