"I can already feel it flowing out of my mind, the way that all profound experiences quietly dissipate and leave only the cast-off skin of memories. In a week, five months, nine years, what I'll be able to recall most easily will be my desperate, futile attempts to resist entropy, the transition from absolute reality to an increasingly imperfect past. The process will override the weak imprint of the event itself, and all I'll be left with is an orphaned sense of change, a self adrift in the mindless future.

        So I must write, because, while I am forever embedded in the stream of change, these words will leave permanent corpses to mark the occasion of our death. These are more lasting monuments to the lost symmetry of our entwined fingers, the last tidal ebb of my shadow over your freckled thigh, than the unreliable graveyard of the mind. This sentence is the imprint of our last, unremarkable kiss, that mindless act of affection that I now compare to the quiet acceptance of the sacrament: our unspoken complicity in the murder of our time, of our emotions, of our better selves.

        Now, I pitch headfirst into oblivion. If I have failed at adequately etching the list of our mutual transgressions onto this paper, I am sorry, for the moment. When I struggle to bring the tilt of your mouth to my mind, when I cannot remember the exact shade of your irises, I might chance upon these words and feel a gross approximation of this sorrow, gleaning the remnants of emotion the way an amateur archaeologist rummages through a midden pile. No amount of trash can ever be remade into a person.

        Goodbye. I really loved you, but I think my heartbreak is retroactive, so now I think I must have never loved you or anyone else."

         While I read the letter, I slowly peeled off my blue blazer and hung it up on an empty wall hook next to a few trilbies, my baggy, herringbone winter coat, and my wrinkled labcoat. Grey, humid air filtered in through my apartment's picture windows, mixing with the slight sheen of sweat I'd built up from my walk. Without bothering to remove my boots, I took a beer from the refrigerator and slumped onto the cool, green leather of the chaise lounge. The buzzing in my head matched the bitterness that washed into my mouth with each sip from the bottle as I finished reading the last few words, carefully folded the flimsy piece of paper, and let it slip to the floor.
         Filtering in from the outside world, I heard the faint ring of a landline telephone. The high-pitched clamor glided through the heavy air and I was suddenly seized by the thought of getting up, throwing on my blazer, and scrambling outside to find the phone and answer it. The thought consumed me, but the only response I received was the sharp sting in my mouth of alcohol. I had forgotten to swallow. Eventually, the ringing stopped and the June air settled back into the nearly audible vibration of its thick molecules. I was alone again in the summer silence.
        I picked up the remote, put on The National, and finished my beer to the swelling refrain of "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks".
        Later that night, I burned the letter in an empty coffee can and watched the sparks whirl up and disappear into the clouded sky, brief lives failing to pierce the veil.

06/22/2012

Author's Note: .

Posted on 06/22/2012
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