You pour your heart out in a blinding flash of light and warmth and the
nova vanishes into another space, a dark space, a place of no remorse
and no regrets and late night conversations and untold tales.  If only
you could read her heart like you dream in color, seeing only
everyday life filtered through a lens of nocturnal unconsciousness.
In your dreams you live the fantasy but the dismal light of day pours
through the windows desperately in need of washing and the blinds
desperately in need of dusting and falls upon your blinking face as you
stare at the ceiling and hear only the rustling of your hair against
the pillow and the vacant distant noises made by your neighbors in
the too-thin walls of an angry apartment.<br><p>

Movement is difficult because you have spent your energy in that
flash of heat but somehow you are edging across the bed in tiny
muscle spasms until your fingers clutch the bedspread and convulsively
you haul yourself up and stagger dizzily under the sheer pressure of
a new day.  Unknowingly your organs slide and tumble and resettle
themselves in their fibrous webs like slimy spiders until you organize
yourself.  If you listen closely and the environment is relatively
quiet you will be able to hear your muscles creak slightly as they
release their store of energy, in the exact same way you saw your
mind release its store of energy, in the exact same way you knew
that she wasn't ever real, not in the sense that you want her to be.<br><p>

And then there is little else.<br><p>

Friday August 30 1996, free association, because, hey, free association.