I Have A Very Strong Sense Of

I Knew That To Find And To Feel Yoav Again Would Be Terribly Painful, Because Of What Had Become Of Him, And Because Of What I Knew He Could Ignite In Me, A Vitality That Was Excruciating Because Like A Flare It Lit Up The Emptiness Inside Me And Exposed What I Always Secretly Knew About Myself: How Much Time I'd Spent Being Only Partly Alive, And How Easily I'd Accepted A Lesser Life.

Our Kiss Was Niticlimactic. It Wasn't That The Kiss Was Bad, But It Was Just A Note Of Punctuation In Our Long Conversation, A Parenthetical Remark Made In Order To Assure Each Other Of A Deeply Felt Agreement, A Mutual Offer Of Companionship, Which Is So Much More Rare Than Sexual Passion Or Even Love.

You’re Lost In Your Own World, In The Things That Happen There, And You’ve Locked All The Doors. Sometimes I Look At You Sleeping. I Wake Up And Look At You And I Feel Closer To You When You’re Like That, Unguarded, Than When You’re Awake. When You’re Awake You’re Like Someone With Her Eyes Closed, Watching A Movie On The Inside Of Your Eyelids. I Can’t Reach You Anymore. Once Upon A Time I Could, But Not Now, And Not For A Long Time.

I Left The Library. Crossing The Street, I Was Hit Head-on By A Brutal Loneliness. I Felt Dark And Hollow. Abandoned, Unnoticed, Forgotten, I Stood On The Sidewalk, A Nothing, A Gatherer Of Dust. People Hurried Past Me. And Everyone Who Walked By Was Happier Than I. I Felt The Old Envy. I Would Have Given Anything To Be One Of Them.

She [my Mother] Was The Force Around Which Our World Turned. My Mother Was Propelled Through The Universe By The Brute Force Of Reason. She Was The Judge In All Our Arguments. One Disapproving Word From Her Was Enough To Send Us Off To Hide In A Corner, Where We Would Cry And Fantasize Our Own Martyrdom. And Yet. One Kiss Could Restore Us To Princedom. Without Her, Our Lives Would Dissolve Into Chaos.