...the Lightness of a Hotel Bed. Quakertown, PA.

Sometimes I could be drowning.

Anchors haven't the will to float, I think. Not that they couldn't... if they really wanted it, the cool free air. They lost the will to rise past the sinking pull of the deep blue water.

There are days when I'm overcome by the feeling that I'm light on will and heavy on doubt and thus, I grow cumbersome metal arms and an overwhelmingly forceful base that sends me plummeting to the depths.

With you, though... I'm not somewhere on the bottom looking up. I am like a fleck of light along the water... a fallen leaf, floating along to kiss the hulls of passing ships.

We live together in an apartment that by human standards is small, but by New York standards is somewhat moderate... though oftentimes we're on top of each other. And I love you. So that helps things. And you love me... so that helps things. Too.

I sit, sometimes, on the bed and watch you type away your research papers, or something for one of your million jobs, and am lulled into a trance by the rhythm of your precocious typing. Your gentle movements on the chair, little adjustments, ever the dancer... you reach for your water glass and I'm awake suddenly, unaware I had drifted off.

Some nights, coming home late, I stand outside our door and press my ear to the crack between the frame and the hinge and try to picture what's going on inside. I can now reliably tell where you are in the apartment in a few moments. I like to think that I could surprise you, but our deadbolt makes such a heavy thud at opening that its bark announces any intruder. Some days, though, I get lucky and you're in the bathroom. You get so mad at being surprised, but I just find it funny. Because you make a cute face when you're notactuallymad the way you get. It's awfully endearing.

You're changing, though. Like everything changes... I suppose, but I was hoping your chance magic could stick to form long enough for the rest of the world to change around us. But, you're changing. You're growing. Beautiful, brilliant, brave... and I understand its a brave thing you're doing. Leaving.

Many things are easy to understand and difficult to accept. Your going certainly falls into that category. Perhaps I lack the imagination? experience? to adequately appreciate the benefits of two beds, two rooms, two addresses.

But I love you. So that helps things. And you love me. And that grows. Too.

Perhaps we'll meet again, as strangers, on a bench in central park. And I'll sit quietly, a skill I'll acquire with the practice of solitude, and wow you with an air guitar routine that will literal knock your socks off of your feet. We'll walk barefoot on the crunchy gravel and spell our names in the stones with our fingers. You'd fall head over heels for me and we'd never leave each other again.

But I could be drowning. Maybe your adventure in the big blue world will turn you into a charisma asteroid, but it might turn me into a crater. Or at least something deep down in the earth's mantle... and somewhere in yourself, you'll need to drag out a drill, a massive, meteoric drill to catch me where I've fallen. Maybe then, you'll stretch out a mile-long arm down the mile-long hole and slowly drag me up, back to the grassy outside of this graceful little rock planet. Maybe then, covered in dust and dirt, wiping the dried chunks of lava from my face, you'll tell me I am home and I'll nod and follow you anywhere.

Until we get there, I don't know how it'll all transfigure me. If I'm certain of one thing, though... it's that I want what I see here to be true there. For you and I to be together in that field. We'll spell things in the ground and roll around in the grass and lookers on will marvel at our timeless and endless love. I want to look back at a dark time with a smile and wonder at how remarkably bright the present feels in comparison. I want so many things. And I think we'll have them.

Because I love you. And that helps things. And you love me. Wow!

Like fireworks exploding.