As I listen to this music, slithering from one song to another entirely different, each one meaning something 'each one connected to my past and present ' I see why I arranged them to play this way. I see why songs can be played out at our own ease, by our own decision-making processes. Who can trust that? Our personal decision-making processes when made for ourselves? We aren't to be trusted with ourselves. We will haunt and sacrifice and then beg back for what we lost. And as I listen to Julee Cruise sing, "The Nightingale," or Gabriel Yared's tune, "To the Hospital," from, "Autumn in New York," I weep at the haunting nature, or to a song someone gave, saying it reminded them of me, from Casino Royale, "Vesper." I weep at how it is that I can do this to myself. And I weep for the hard but hollow shell I would be were I not reminded of every step of the way. So I must immerse myself in this and realize it as part of the tapestry that is my life. Perhaps it is part of the reasoning behind the lump in my throat, the fire in my abdomen, as I write my book; because there is no outrunning my past. Without a word of my past being written upon the pages of my book, it is as clear as any tangible thing before me could ever possibly be. A year has gone, and yet I haven't truly allowed myself to realize how much, despite regrets that should not be mine, I miss him. Ho long must one go? How far does one have to travel? How many sights will I have to see to try to forget the way our bodies fit? With certainty, our bodies fit. With the certainty of my heart, my quiet feet and legs walked shakily up the stairs (that nearly tripped me up each night, not only because of the darkness, but because of the dragonflies, flapping veined wings in my stomach, all over again); with certainty, my body sliding under the covers, the smell of burning embers hanging high in the ceiling from the fireplace downstairs, I would run my fingertips along his back, fit my arms beneath his as he turned to me sometimes moments later, feeling him ready and firm, long and thick against my back and legs; his body is both hard and at ease; my body ready at any moment to ravage him and devour every ounce, to have him fill every space of me, and to swallow him into my own eternity. Never one day, with the circling of the sun, did we love and sweat the same, tempting each other with appetizers. Never beneath (or perhaps within) the moonlight, did we fail to quench our thirsts through fruit so ripe it must be taken from he tree and spread thick, juice and pulp alike, over the body.
Perhaps I knew even then that my time was limited and so I must give all I could, with hopes he would remember somewhere along the line. Somewhere along the line, he has forgotten, and released what I gave into secondhand eternity....

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