Yes, everything worked out. Everything always does. So why am I listening to "Strawberry Gashes" and feeling dizzy, why this certainty that I could walk out the door and not really miss myself?

Self-interest, the ego. Odd phrases from a book I'll never read. The way he moves when he's worried. Taste... the taste of my own fear disappearing and in its place a love, desire and comfort and need and hunger and pleasure and affection and GODS, but I miss it.

I miss him.

I know, this isn't really the time or place to be thinking about this sort of thing. I'm supposed to be comfortable here, to actually relax and I can't seem to get the images of people from long-ago or even from now-but-distant out of my head. There's a remix of "Something I Can Never Have" playing now, mix-loud and the slow pulse that I remember etching my flesh, screaming into a pillow, the heat of wax and the ice-sting of a razor...

...don't give me up, I wanted to say. Give me something to make it ok, a place-holder, but don't give me up. Don't leave. Don't leave ME. Please.

Come back?

Everyone is fading into nothing against the backdrop of a tiny two-bedroom apartment on 40th and how it felt to watch someone I had only recently met walk away and disappear onto a bus, nowhere... if he's not here now do I know he exists? If he's not here how can I keep him?

Comments on the lousy remix. Trying another version.

I don't want to deny them humor and relief and a chance to unwind but I can't find enough ink in the universe to describe how I feel.

Computer crashes. Hate. Frustration. If this gets eaten I don't care.

It doesn't exist.

I don't exist.

Nothing.

No.

He wanted to be my everything.

Why couldn't I have been happy with that?

Three daughters. A big house. Nowhere, nothing, all I know is that his dreams still ring in my mind.

Blue hair and dark nights and lover, do you remember me, do you know how much you taught me simply by being YOU?

It was all worth it.

Please, remember me.

...you make this all go away...