“Back to the present.I found you in my locker the next morning.Not you.A photograph.But for a moment, it felt like finding a body,It felt like findingwhat you I needed to be found.”

“I felt like I was missing something. Missingyou more. Missing whatever was going to happen next.”

“It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”

“There are times I think of us all and I wish we were back in second grade. Not really that young. But I wish it felt like second grade. I’m not saying everyone was friends back then. But we all got along. There were groups, but they didn’t really divide. At the end of the day, your class was your class, and you felt like you were a part of it. You had your friends and you had the other kids, but you didn’t really hate anyone longer than a couple of hours. Everybody got a birthday card. In second grade, we were all in it together. Now we’re all apart.”

“contiguous, adj.I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain. "When I was a kid, "I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it--you know, the kind where you have to fit them all together. And one day I got it in my head that California and Nevada were in love. I told my mom, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I ran and got those two pieces and showed it to her--California and Nevada, completely in love. So a lot of the time when we're like this"--my ankles against the backs of your ankles, my knees fitting into the backs of your knees, my thighs on the backs of your legs, my stomach against your back, my chin folding into your neck--"I can't help but think about California and Nevada, and how we're a lot like them. If someone were drawing us from above as a map. that's what we'd look like; that's how we are." For a moment, you were quiet. And then you nestled in and whispered. "Contiguous." And I knew you understood.”

“Picking them up and reading them, I felt sadness do deep that it will never really be gone. It was a sobering moment-- sobering not because I was drunk, but because I felt like I was shifting into this new state of naked clarity. It was higher state of sobriety, a painful state of sobriety, because the truth was suddenly unvarnished, making me feel unvarnished.”

“I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.”