Create custom content without a template?

Hi, I have a field that just contains some text. It's just a one-off field for one page, with not much complex markup around it (just inside a paragraph tag). So I'd prefer not to have my markup spread out between my php page and a separate file in /perch/templates/content/... rather, I just want to be able to declare that a certain content region contains certain fields. In my php file I am using perch_content_custom() with the 'skip-template' option to retrieve that data in raw form, so I'm wondering if I can also define the field itself in "raw form" (without a template file, because the template file only has 1 line of code in it for the perch:content tag).

Right now my php page has this:

<p>
    <?php
    perch_content_create('My Text', array(
        'template' => 'my_text.html',
        'multiple' => false,
        'edit-mode' => 'singlepage',
    ));
    $my_text = perch_content_custom('My Text', array(
        'template' => 'my_text.html',
        'skip-template' => true,
        'return-html' => false,
        'raw' => true,
    ));
    echo $my_text;
    ?>
</p>

And this requires that I also have a /perch/templates/content/my_text.html file with a dummy field in it, really just to declare the field as being "textarea" type:

<perch:content id="my_text" type="textarea" label="My Text" />

Is there a way to achieve this by just defining the field as part of the perch_content_create function (or some other way)? Or do I really need to have these one-line files in my templates folder (far away from the php page where they're being used)?

Thanks.