latest hair color development: neon red

s. used to write me love letters from his seventh floor apartment. in a city in which i've never lived. a space i'd never seen. ghost occupied. imagined. he'd write in the most convoluted manner -- as if the sounds of the words meant more than the actual meaning did. but it was always a performance between us two. the way things looked and sounded mattered more than what things actually added up to be. because if you counted out all the important figures, the resultant zero left us both feeling awfully useless and dry. like eyes cried out for too many hours over something for which the relevance had already long been forgotten. we passed each other this way. the matching of words into sounds into thoughts that needed no other form. until we'd neglected the one true thing that mattered. the substance of it all. the realness of bodies held fast between sheets -- walking along streets -- eating fresh berries from a bowl with our hands. his words rendered him less real. the way his prose moved from endearing into fascination and then straight into an annoyance that i swept daily, weekly, monthly into the garbage bin -- like leftovers never intended to be eaten. how much do we create and consume one another? how real are any of us anymore?

my penance: the lack of soft words left only for me to devour