Oct. 10, 2003 @ 8:23 p.m.

I can’t do this. I tell you that I miss you. As I tell you, thinking silently, "Why did you say it again? Wait for her to tell you this time." Every time the thoughts in my head get more and more violent until sooner or later my hand begins to hit my head as those words come out. These feelings of happiness, that I want around all the time, seem to be getting more spaced out and foreign again, like I’m back in Texas gazing at the stars, dreaming and wishing I was anywhere but there. Anywhere but sitting on the stairs that are just slightly bolted to the wall. With any movement or relaxing rearrangement, the invention shakes as my 150-lb. body settles in and out of motion with gravity. Now I sit here, minus the stairs and stars but given a hardwood floor, flush with stucco white walls, to rely against as I think of you. Thinking of how you’ve been away for too long. How all I want is to put you between my arms, instead of my legs, holding my head high with pride and happiness, because I can smile into your beautiful blue eyes that I still have yet to take for granted. Thinking of how I want to be in love and how I want to mean so much to someone else, how I want to be that brightest star in your sky and provide you with your brightest day. That day, the one you look back on after each replacement of brightest days and smile as you turn the page to your mental collection of them. I want to be the bookbinder for that collection, painted, prettied and picturesque. I want so much of all that, except to see exactly how the battlefield lays, with scattered body parts, missing limbs and closed eyes, screams, moans and the stench of death getting stronger like each additional day of a rancid milk experiment that has gone on for too long. These feelings make me sick, but I can’t go to the doctor to find out about it. I just lay here on the hard, cold floor, tired of sitting and think about how if I could just rip out my heart, everything would be okay. We all just need to rip our hearts out and throw them away. At least I haven’t danced with you yet. Oh wait, I’m supposed to. At least I haven’t grown attached. Oh wait, I already did. At least I haven’t done anything stupid. Oh wait, that’s a lie. As my battered heart continues to beat and slow it’s stutter, all that I ask is for you to be gentle, that you let me die in the softest way possible, with the sweetest goodbye. Like soft lips touching rough foreheads, my skin still warm to your oral orifice, your hand squeezing mine as it lifelessly squeezes back, just like the handshakes and glances into eyes that hold so much meaning and passion, as if to say, "I understand your loss." But we all can still sit around, mouths sewn shut with quarter inch string as we scream silently, waving our hands around, ecstatically dancing for understanding and completely dead-on interoperation of our words, as if they were all heard. As if they were all understood, edited, printed and published, read by thousands and changing the world, just like you’re changing mine. Anticipation is something I never could get used to, so as I stand blindfolded and awaiting, please let those last five seconds go by as fast as my life, or allow me to continue on.