It gets pretty lonely being Etta Place, denied her one request. I had to watch you die, then I had to watch you come back as something less than alive. But who am I to say that’s true? No, the only thing I’ll say about this body with your name, it isn’t /you/ and I, living the high life. We both knew that it would have to end someday. But I thought we’d both die, leaving no one here to deal with the regrets. My undead friends, you’re so hard to look at. Sometimes your faces make me forget that most of us aren’t yet where we had hoped we’d be. But our ranks are growing thinner. A couple more die every winter and they can’t remember who they were before the freeze. My undead friends, you’re so hard to look at. Sometimes I wish that I could forget, we’re nowhere near as hopeful as we used to be but there’s a chance this is temporary, we’re not fucking done until we’re dead and buried and I’m not giving in until you come back home to me. So I’m sitting on the front porch waiting. Come on darling, the light is fading and i wish you’d come back home so I could get some sleep.

Can anyone be trusted now to make a value judgement? I can’t ever be certain on the mornings when i wake up and you’ve been with me all night but gone as soon as i resign myself to getting out of bed and getting wet and getting dressed and letting go, or catching hold. So do happy feelings have to be based on real things to make us really happy? Because I’ve been feeling that when I’ve been playing outside these lines, I feel fine. But Joel and I realized, while we can make it perfect in our minds, this kind of perfection fades with time, or without it. So I could make it perfect my mind, I could make you perfect in my mind. But I don’t think that I could ever live like that. There’s too much world to love when the skies are turning black and I could never quit on you like that.

Oh there’s something about this night that I can’t explain - How the sound of snowfall seems to cover everything that we forgot was unimportant to us - and I can’t remember what the world looked like before its brilliant change. But we found that looking back we couldn’t tell which steps we took in which direction and every piece of evidence is pointing to the idea that I’m under the influence of something that I saw in your complexion, darling. And I’ve told you this a thousand times - It’s a war between what’s horrifying and those of us who want to live together. And you’ve got to know you’ve got a choice, you choose what side you’re on. And you’ve got to know it’s never black and white but it IS us and them. I think you might be different. I’m not sure I can trust that yet. I’ve made mistakes before, I’ve been wrong before. And there’s that look in your eyes that I can’t explain, though I’ve studied the entire course of history that contains both our names, important dates and places, certain associations that I would have to consider removing. But we found that looking back, we couldn’t tell which steps we took in which direction and every piece of evidence is pointing to the idea that I’m under the influence of something that I found in your embrace. Things get heavy and you back up, ask yourself if you’re old enough to do the things you’ve done or think the things you’ve thought. Darling, you looked so pretty watching as the trees were silhouetted by the setting sun, those perfect winter nights we love. But things get heavy and we back up, ask ourselves what the hell we’re thinking sleeping in the same bed, the same old shit again. But you look perfect, calm and peaceful, dreaming dreams of what? I’ll ask you in the morning. Another day, another chance to say goodbye. And I hope when we get beaten down again, we’ll cry out just like our heroes did, saying, “It’s not over this is just beginning.”

I should have told you - the graveyard is no place for picking flowers, no matter how pretty - but you laughed it off. And sitting on the bed with you is no way to get work done, I haven’t read a single page this hour. You’ve got this way of making the clearest things seem so confusing, and we need that, but you’ve got this way of making the confusing things seem so much clearer. I can’t remember the last time I felt so nervous about being with another person, so careful with every word. When its time to call it a night, you say you’ll walk me outside. This time I hope I’m brave enough to kiss you. I met you one July, it took me way too long to realize you were someone I wanted to be around. I know that we’re both broken but you’re making me think that we’re not obsolete just yet, and we don’t have to go to sleep just yet. You are the lightest thing ever felt in my arms and you’re perfect. You have the shyest eyes I’ve ever kissed in my life and I love you.