Sometimes, my favorite Shakespeare play is a comedy. Young lovers denied of their relationship. A protagonist that dies, or so we think he does. Leaving his lover lost without him. Hilarious good times.

We all get lost a little bit in the hands and eyes--the hearts of others. Roam streets like children strayed or stranded. We all do it. A year ago, my never-failing computerized calendar reminds me when I arrive at work this morning--a year ago, today, he left and I collapsed onto the sidewalk in tears. and he made me go inside so that he could drive away. That's what it actually says. In a little square on the screen. So bitter and scared and confused, I must have set the damn thing on repeat. As if it were a goddamned holiday.

Maybe there is something to the comedy of it all. When Caius Lucius asks Imogen, "What art thou?", she can only simply reply, "I am nothing: or if not, / Nothing to be were better. This was my master,". And don't we all want to feel exactly that way and never have to feel exactly that way ever again? I didn't throw myself down on the asphalt because I thought I wouldn't survive. Or because there's nothing left of me without a man. That man. Any man. But that simply I had believed hard enough in the lie that is love that is the faith that says then nothing to be were better.

Because, trying to understand it all, really, amounts to asking questions without answers. And when I don't have any answers and can't think of anymore questions. I return to writing and crawl into the words of others.

"The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.", James Baldwin

Maybe, a year later, I don't know all that much more about any of these things. Mysteries and the possibility of torment remain. Will always remain. And I walk the streets pleasantly pleased by the pressure of it all. Maybe a year later, I don't know all that much more about any of these things. But my partner rode the bus with me to work this morning because it was cold and dark and raining. These are mysteries to which I don't mind playing so close. And torment, like all things, doubles meaning and won't sit down long enough for me to accuse it--of anything.

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.", Baldwin says, "Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."