My mistake

I could not bring myself to say it; I would not allow myself the possibility of failure, nor introduce the moment when I would no longer be master of myself. I could not say it; I could not ask the question gilded with hope and with doom, and in failing to ask it I had failed. For nothing else but your affirmation is failure, and failure is everything but the shape of those words forming, with precious slowness, like silver in the air, like the peal of a bell.