I am a nut or a bolt, a small swirling cog in the mechanics of what it means to be alive, the words and phrases sweltering in my brain in thick whorls of thought until I forget them. For what it’s worth, you’re stringing me along like a clanking can tied to a dog’s tail. Who are you really? You remind me of someone I want to love.

I remember these last few days in a whirl of white warm lights and deep dramatic darknesses where only whispers and mellow mouths and movements murmur. We are all different people in the dark, whether backstage or in a bedroom, babyfaces soft and callow in the black, eyes dank with dreamdew.

And I know that I do not mean to do the things I do. I stand on my tiptoes, I put my hands on your shoulder, I whisper in your ear, I take your hand, I want to believe in your heroes like a child believes in his parents’ god.

Everyone is telling me what to do, but they do not do, they do not do. I will do, I will make do, I will have done with it. When you are a child with a baby tummy and soft thin hair, they do not tell you how much you will miss people and how fast you will forget them and how the east and the south will drag you away from each other so that it’s not even worth it anymore and how you will someday look at your increasing indifference with horror and how once you start caring about your appearance you will never have a good hair day again. No, they do not tell you these things.

They don’t explain pain, just arithmetic.

This is why I never liked math.