The most simple: a small bitter swallow, a scratch at the throat, a burst of energy. Or maybe diluted with water to make it last longer, but still the same bitterness, the same energy. Sometimes with sweetness, more than a spoonful of sugar, froth and excess and flavor, laughter and guilty pleasures. Soaked in boiled water the grit of it sinks to the bottom, and later I read your future of sleepless nights. 

I rode a horse through the candy store, and someone told me that I should ride Napoleon's horse as it would be closer to the ground, and thus allow easier access to the candy. I woke up feeling guilty which means I drank too much; I'd frankly rather have the headache. While being curious over a shoulder I asked a woman what the google doodle was and she said "it's google" and didn't even realize that it was different, or know what a google doodle was. It was the first day of spring, which was true this year and for which I am grateful. I wonder what it is like to not be curious. My cat also wonders, although her curiosity mainly concerns how to get back up into the window she somehow fell out of. Poor furry ball of toothless stupidity. Lost a card from the deck and now can't remember if I've already asked you if you found it; did you? Sometimes I hate humanity so much there are no words and other times I want nothing more than for someone to pour themselves into me, every story a drop of wonder. I wish I could remember more people without mourning them. I got a haircut last week and then dyed it dark red; when I wear lipstick I look like sex and death, so you don't know if you want to kiss me or stay far away. What I told you was true at the moment but not true forever, just like this sentence. 

Walking home and I wanted one more because it was early yet and also because I am greedy and I always want one more, if we're being honest. And so treated myself to what I wanted, because we cannot be puritans all the time or we'd have nothing to write about. Sitting and feeling the wine roll on my tongue, the words rolling off, smooth talker and my face already sore from laughing. And we went to the bathroom and styled your hair because it was that kind of night. I got kicked out of a Denny's once for doing that but we're grown-ups now and also this is Europe and perhaps a little water splashed in the bathroom at the end of the night is no big deal. One more one more and I caught myself in the middle of a story that had no end and so time to go. Then walking home something small and cold flew into my mouth and I almost spit it out before I realized it was snow, because evenings end but winter is apparently forever.

It is like in the horror films when the character is running and running to get away and turns back to look and see if enough distance has been gained. The running, this constant treadmill of activity is in itself good, and a solid, sensible plan is to keep moving. It is work coming in, and the pleasure in doing a job well. Friends who hold your hands to steady you as you run. It is feeling strength in the legs pumping under you, feeling again capable of getting away from it, away from it finally, away from it for good…and then you glance behind and trip over a tree root you didn't see. And you are suddenly down, raw and scraped, knees bleeding, tears pouring out of your eyes because it hurts and because you forgot to see it coming. And the tree root angry in the ground, torn because you weren't watching. And while you sit there picking the dirt out of your bleeding hands it has caught you, enveloped you again. Did you really, really think you could get away? Did you think you could just pause for a second there, lean on a tree, catch your breath, and nothing would happen? Sometimes you are foolish and silly, and sometimes you are just plain stupid.

How going out at night made me feel like being a teenager again, though I did not have to crawl out the window but just walked down the hall, quietly closed the front door on the sleeping family inside, gently turned the key in the lock and then skipped down the stairs. How the night sparkled, with frost on the grass, and how beautiful it is to walk with headphones, so that everything seems faintly unreal, like a film or more likely a music video. So many people are asleep and the streets deserted, and then inside it is so alive that the walk through the silent park now seems impossible. How you kissed me in the taxi and it was sweet and I skipped back to the door just like I did 25 years ago, as if I would never be tired.

I had nightmares on Saturday from which I have not yet recovered. The feeling of being trapped inside of a need I fear to articulate, and then, having spoken it aloud not having it met, or not merely not met but not even acknowledged. Please help me carry this or I will drop it, please call me when you get there so I'll know you are safe, please look at me when I talk to you and I'll believe you're listening, please please please. And then the vase shattered, flowers strewn, water soaking into the carpet; or the phone unrung, deciding when to call the police and admit how afraid you are; or the sentences unspooled from a broken mouth, unheard.

Sometimes the level of fierce independence that I claim to practice runs up against my frank need with such force that everything is broken for a while. 

I've worked at a job calling people for an English survey for the last two weeks. It is universally acknowledged that I have a very pleasing speaking voice, especially when my mouth is filled with other people's words and not my own blather (that is to say: you may not like what words my own brain puts in my mouth, but you very much want me to read to you). So I made a tidy just-in-time-for-Christmas sum calling people and getting them to give me their time, their honesty, and in some cases full life vignettes, just because I asked. Talking to a man in Ireland who was telling me about riding horses on Catalina, and I wondered why it was easy to ask him for things and how I knew I would get them. Later my mouth covered with my hands so that I wouldn't ask you for anything, for nothing at all. It's fine; I'm just noting it. Silently, just to myself.

I want to tell people when they're nice to me, too. I mean my desire for post-game analysis is equally strong after a win or a loss. I want to say, here is where you delight me. Here is where you are special. But when the game is lost it seems somehow nobler to just walk away, even while my pointy head arranges short time travel trips back to fix it where it went wrong. It is the worst form of staircase wit, the wagging finger of but-if-you'd-listen-you'd-know-I-was-right, the same thing that will wake me up in a week with regrets that don't matter because they are over. 

What else? 

Okay, let's break this down into small, manageable parts. Let's get real on it. Let's call it what it is. There was something you loved. You loved it in the pure open-hearted way that comes from getting so exactly what you need without even asking that it seems like the object of your affections is itself perfect. I'm saying you loved it because it seemed to love you so well. It's okay, it's natural, everybody does that, everybody loves a provider. So that was the first part, the part where you loved that which met your needs.

And then that was irregularly available. 

And the thing is, the reason it was gone, the most likely reason? Is because you really didn't need it anymore. Somewhere along the line you I don't want to say lost interest but there were a lot of other things that drew your attention. Pretty things. New textures. Flavors. And that which you loved because it gave you what you needed became that which you loved because it reminded you of how you felt when you needed it. You went from loving it for what it did to loving it for how you felt about it. 

And then it was gone altogether. 

And then there you are, fist jammed against your mouth, weeping. Distraught. Casting about, as it were. And you fish up something shiny and smooth and new. A thing that makes you feel the way you used to feel when your needs were being met, a thing that you perform towards as you performed before. The crying stops. Things get hopeful. And this new thing is yours, yours, yours. Smells like comfort; is comfort. 

And then they want to take that away from you, too.

They say, oh, clever things. You're supposed to get over it. Move on. This love you imagine is deforming you in ways you can't understand. Oh grow up and stop crying. Try talking through your empty mouth, form your weak tongue around the words for how you feel, distract yourself with movement, let it go. And you want to, because everybody wants you to, but you don't want to really at all. They make a chart of how many days you can go without it, and you try to be brave but inside your mouth the sour taste of tears you don't cry and the lack of comfort, that little comfort that they insist on taking away. Why. 

And then it's gone. 

And you're … okay. That small comfort, that dummy, that idiot, your little peacemaker, whatever. I'll tell you what, you can get over it. Because here's the secret they haven't told you; the thing that makes it okay is quite simple: you loved something, but it didn't love you back. It was incapable of loving you back. So it's really, really okay to let it go. You will not starve, because it never fed you. And now you are free to find something interesting, something complicated, something real. Something delicious.

When I met you, I was crying, because it was cold. An involuntary response, I would have explained if you'd asked. Fortunately I'm a master, and it is possible that you didn't even notice.

We talked for hours. I learned so many things about you. It is my best trick, to lay myself out as on a blanket at a flea market, so obvious in terms of tarnished and broken and hidden treasures. You couldn't help but pull the trinkets from your own pocket in response, a snowglobe holding a childhood memory, a knife you'd used to cut yourself free. By nightfall I'd wrapped my blanket back up again, stuffed everything into a carpet bag, and you were showing me your scars. It is interesting how quickly one can establish intimacy, when it's needed, how fast we can go from perusing the menu to tearing flesh from the bone. 

I keep thinking about her and wanting to say something that is as deep as her feelings, something worthy of her pain and her sacrifice, her love. And because there is nothing really to say beyond the fact of herself, and nothing more important in my mind, I find myself nearly mute.

She came from the future, I start, because how else could she have continued into a future that offered her little other than one disaster, one rejection, one sad ending after another. How could she have gone on unless it is because she knew she went on. Her dedication to each thing, and failure, and dedication to the next thing, it's almost too much to bear unless I think that like me she sees the future and knows that her dedication will ever be enough but it is what she has to offer, and offer, and offer. Hands crippled by one love nevertheless reaching out in optimism? or certainty? to take up the next goal, purposeful. 

Even in love, I don't begin to understand the strength she had. To love a man who took her name when she took his; it must have felt at the time like she was the equal she knew she deserved to be.  She learned his life so that she could help him lead it; learned his language to help him preserve it. And he listened to her, believed in her, credited her. And yet when I mention her to others she is most famous for how he betrayed her, again and again. 

What would it be like, to watch your husband leave to do work you find important, to watch your son die, to write your daughter cheering letters because it's the only thing you can use to sustain her in prison? What would it be like to know you'd given up your own freedom, things you were promised with ease, in exchange for this? I mean, he won; she won. She had five years of knowing they won, but that whole five years she had to remember all the things she lost to get there. I can't imagine. Or rather I can't stop imagining.