While he imagined Jesus and prayed and dusted caked mud from his ankles.

Shouting, "My sexuality won't sleep with me."

Walking back to the house he approached her standing at the threshold where she futtered, "'Tif I've become the depressing version of myself I'm sort of happy about it," with her wide greyes blazing. "You look like a portrait by Durer, my love," and he ate of egg-salad, which stood in her hands there.

Delicate, I was delicate all night with my loving; I shaved the blonde hairs from my philtrum. I flossed. I ate a small piece of beef for a clean, vigorous constitution.

You never needed all of it,
you just needed something;
and though I thought
I needed nothing
you were right I think. When we got something,
and other people suggested it was nothing,
we were fine with it.
We suffered little,
for we before
had battled fear
of mere existing; we had had little
and so this as something overwhelmed us.

Or no, was it much more like you drinking wine alone in the tub thinking some aspect of your past might be something I would find unforgiveable? Or me storming through the streets of New York City thinking the absence of your letters meant your heart had abandoned me? How many sexual partners have you had? Where do I rate? How happy do I make you feel? Some of my memories—oh my God—I just, I just vomited, a little bit, a little bit in my mouth there. I'm not drinking right now, I'm not even tipsy. Just a little bit, of barf. ...I am no energy today. Not low energy. I am simply drained of internal motivation. Today. Right now. This is the perfect place for departure. I can feel this closing. I am currently looking at a print of a painting by Edward Munch. From 1923, called Spring in the Elm Forest II. It is filling my heart. It is filling my mind and then my heart. Not ecstatically. Just softly, pleasantly, and prosaically filling my mind and then my empty heart like a bottle of milk fills a jug which then fills a thick glass like it does at the beginning of James Joyce's Ulysses, pouring its creaminess into multiple transparencies. Multiplicities. That was the year your mother died. 1923. She died and the Oldsmobile picked me and then you up for the funeral. It was the first time we met. I was 18 and you were 19. I was sitting alone in the back of the car when suddenly we saw you walking down the street by yourself. I didn't know who you were, but they did. They asked you to get in so we could give you a lift. You looked inside. We saw each other, our eyes met. I remember flinching. You asked if you could drive. They said no. So you got in the back with me. On that day I had no idea that one day you would have your head examined. Opened, examined, removed, shut...back...up. I loved you so much.