Sheets, a disarray of white paper; smudged acrylic; the sun pours down from the boxy window in my ceiling, and I think of Dakota who comes in late on Sunday evenings. Her laugh came easy. Her hair were waves of somewhere between red and brunette, a little more than shoulder length; her curves were amazing, neither too extreme in a porn way, or too small and lean against her bones, and her tits were perfect. Her laughter was easy as the way she missed an old friend. She was always last to leave because she liked to say warm goodbyes, and then she would say goodbye to the space herself, like a slow regathering of her bits of soul left in a booth, or by her early-on abandoned seat, or in the lights on the bar counter. She'd enjoy her last smile in the afterglow, and in the cooling of the night. And then she would take herself home.

-

A moth kissed my arm; I was startled.

On Fridays, I used to dance all night. Crowds of skinny bodies and fog machines, and caffeine and shots of hard, showy liquor in my blood. The strobe lights flickering and fading in the hands of some automated algorithm or technician. Stranger after stranger, these bodies. Substances in almost everyone, some to dull, and some to heighten. How do you even remember the people you touch lips with, when nobody intends to go home? Did you even kiss, when there was no intimacy or connection, or even memory?

A boy I met around this time, told me that he slept with 55 people, and now I am his age.
I have not done this, but I don't think it matters. I don't think it is as hard to touch bodies with a stranger. Sex is easy; we have drives. Intimacy is the elusive pursuit.

There was another boy who went sometimes with me when we chased strangers and bodies and maybe something new to pass the time. Sometimes something promising would happen, like the passing interest of an attractive stranger. Most nights, there was nobody quite right. There was never enough drink to quite balance out that thing that weighed a person down, and then there was all at once too much, so he'd get us home, and let me sleep on his shoulder during the long rides.

the art director tagged my name in silver on my favorite midnight street; so young, so young, all the bars & streets are adventures when the city is a ghost town on a gorgeous night at 3something. we kept it consistent, tully neats, many, because the rise of the other irish whiskeys, is just a decade's worth of subway marketing coming to fruition. when we are old, they will say that only old men drink jamesons, because the young will be drinking something else.

i've got a silver ring on a black thread. what's it signify? a silvery fancy that caught my eye on a saturday afternoon. i've got my third tungsten replacement sitting in the bottom of my book bag. a pretty aging thing wore too many diamonds, dangling from two symmetrical holes in her lobes, a tiara, because all gold-diggers are princesses, a cuff, a collar, and so many rings, except for the commitment ones. she mostly ignored her slightly sleazy, ugly, beta-y, significantly older date. i bet she tells him that she's old-fashioned and likes to be treated like lady, and is wide-eyed & girlish at all compressed carbons.

as a child, when patrons came in, and i'd be doodling or doing my math homework or sometimes reading the paper, because intelligent children occasionally like to read expensive rags, i'd suggest the pink ones, because regular ones were boring. when did shiny cut & polished crystals begin to signify love?

love is a poem. love is fiction. love is creativity. love is not roses, but a bouquet that i deconstructed, into a richly-colored blossom, left on every lonely parking meter, or bench, or closed shop door, for the first stranger to claim it.