Dear Rini,

The scene: sun setting over house and hill, the sky pearl-grey and pink-streaked, spindly trees outlined, negative space luminescent. Eyes on fast-rollin' clouds, ethereal stallions stampeding the city, I pace.

Restless as usual. What is it about Niva's apartment, huh? Maybe it's cuz I feel out-of-skin here. Like I should be elsewhere, in spaces dingy or tiny or cramped, with spider-infested carpet and ceilings that slant obliquely. Familiar spaces, fit for an agoraphobe.

Earlier, I was at the Dolores Park Cafe, my hands wrapped around a nearly empty cup of cappuccino, no sugar, facing the Physicist. You know, the first one I ever . . . um, yeah.

"Dating" is such an ill-shaped term. Especially now, three or four years after the first night I met him; I was 21 years old, naive to desire of an adult sort - though crushes were another matter.

Humph, and with him of all people. If I could do it all over again, I would . . . But I wouldn't, because then I'd have never met him. Never known what I didn't want, after all. Or, at least, known that what I didn't want was the shape of him, his own desires and needs and world-understandings.

While he was telling me about his new job in Los Alamos, New Mexico, I was thinking about the year I met him, that year of minor transgression, by others and myself. All the things I'd promise and all the things I'd break so easily, like trust. Who I was then and who I am now - they are inextricably entangled. The younger one trails after me, knotted to my wrist by a long thin red cord, indestructable except by amnesia.

Wondered if he still saw me as he knew me then, the bright child whim-driven. Maybe he did. When he invited me to New Mexico, I laughed. Still the same ol' person.

Ok, now quit rolling your eyes at me,

Love,
Phil

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