everything is nicer by candlelight
2004-02-23 & 7:20 p.m.

if i had gotten to choose how it ended, we would have eaten the last strawberry and there would be nothing left to say other than thank you for closing the door and i love you. i would get to be a windmill in the next life and i would fill each champagne bottle with peonies. you would never be gallant. hellos would be replaced with requests to rolls down the hills and i would travel only by swinging vines and you would not have jolted each time i said i wanted to stay a little longer or if i wanted to keep your kisses in a jar to see if they change color. never is heavier in my stomach than forever, so let's live where we always open the french windows far too wide and spend our midnights in peripheral vision. but this is not even a quip of market olives or your diplomatic decree to restrain me from finishing the last of the chocolate syrup for fingerprints. somewhere a jukebox is playing janis joplin and i ache to hear it and let's go somewhere where upstairs is a figure of speech.

i'm too tired for all of this. the only proof i have that we ever existed are your hurried hellos and the way you walk faster these days.