I see your face each time I close my eyes. What have you done to me? What have I done to myself? Look at you now. I saw you in hysterics, but my concern meant nothing. You brushed it all aside. You will age; beauty fades. You will be lonely. You will never escape your insatiable need for instant gratification. Men will come and go. Alcohol. Drugs. Dirty hotel rooms. Brief encounters.

The rest of your years: punctuated by wanting. I don’t want to be like you— a picture of despair where nothing changes. I want to escape the carousel, the memories of which were fun. But it can’t be like that all the time. The days are all the same, in my mind and on the streets that wind up to a town where I don’t belong.

The monuments of our long tryst—I pass them now, and I just smile. You pulled me into narrow streets for heady kisses, sitting in parks at dawn, drunk on you and cheap, sour wine.

Now, meaning has priority, but I can’t seem to dig it out—stuck in the grime of haunting memory. The dust is laid, and it’s all ended. We were alike, but you were just a game, played out a thousand times.

Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of you, your golden hair. But I know now that it’s red. It tears the wounds apart. Indelible memories swarm my mind; my heart races. I want to forget. Truth be told, I search you out in other people. Wildness and the pursuit of excess—I’m drawn to it intensely.

[290] words.