I've been trying to write about this fear of guns. About clear glass marbles with blue pin wheels locked on their insides that keep spinning and spinning away. And how memories are like that. Precious moving images that change and reflect in the head -- just out of tangible reach.

you pegged me: intensity.

Sometimes I wonder if we ever touched--embraced--if we both might just combust from all the commotion flitting constantly just underneath our skin. Or if instead it all might stop for some brief undelineated moments of time.

The first time on your porch.

I drank coffee from your mug and thought about the memories I'd already created of us growing old together. Personal incinerations of a story I was never meant to hold too tightly. For fuck's sake, I tell myself, I spend way too much time drunk in thirsty bathtubs to deserve anything like that. Pixels and words are still just signs rendered meaningless without the faith of some universal meaning shared, even, between just the two. I always said love is a choice. Not involuntary. Steeped in magic or hummingbird's wings. It's like deciding whether or not to have red or white. To wear a dress or jeans. To keep breathing or let your head fall heavy under the water. A feeling. The most powerful emotion I've ever experienced. Still a choice -- requiring continual work and recommitment to sustain itself. And you.