THE END

Is it the end of things so soon? The end of this month. The end of this thing that never started. Except that it did. Crept upon us, love with its velvet paws. I don't know why it is that I fall in love with you, but I do. I just see you and hear you and even the trifling irritations make me fall.

Why love? Why would we fall in love at all? We are different creatures in this town. I know that you don't believe this to be true, but I think this is so. Maybe it is that your private persona, the one that rarely steps out, is my twin.

I love you I love you I love. If I say it again and again does the effort of it impress upon you how much that I do? It's just mechanical, the writing or speaking of it. But how else to relieve the overflow of my heart? Ah, it's chemical too, I know. Just neurotransmitters and hormones and subtle changes in pH balance. I'll go for a roller coaster ride if I want to duplicate the feeling.

So I let go after this. I step away and let go of you. Why? Because I think we can't do this anymore. I think it means too much, hurts more and more each time we come together and go away. And when I try to say how much I wanted this to work, how much I want to be with you still, it feels inadequate, a poor description of my desire.

This is what I was trying to tell you the other night, drunk because I am not brave enough to say these things in the sober light of day. So I will tell you again that I love you, that I think of wearing sackcloth and ashes, that I will curse every mile between us. And I will tell you that I love you for thinking too much, for saving too little, for the lists that you like to write, for the books that you hoard, for the fish that you catch, for how you can talk endlessly about your house, for drinking until the sun rises and then reaches the middle of the blue sky, for being self-conscious, for being my friend, for being my love. For all of these things and none of these things I hold you in my heart.---