"Hello, lemon," I said. I don't know why. Arbitrary words for a love as certain and clear and sweet as sunlight. Hello peach, hello honey, hello stran

ger, hello you.


three more books borrowed, after three books returned. what is it about my recent ravenings, devouring swamps, masses of words one page after another. i finished my obligatory chick lit text in a few hours, unexpectedly enjoying the author's wit (she's a humour columnist, apparently. how are these people assembled; they know what it takes to make me laugh), and now i sit absent-mindedly reading it a second time, slower. a times-two book in a single day.

Most women, and i think i can generalize here, will put off buying a new bra until their straps disintegrate, and even then they might improvise for a while. Wear sweatshirts, for instance, or simply not leave the house. This is because bra shopping is exceedingly dull. What are bras, if not bland, ineffectual necessities tarted up with an array of sewn-on daisies? The most timid fashion statment i have ever known is the teensy, superfluous bow at the cleavage of my bra, intended to suggest... I don't know what. A certain hypermodest girlish femininity. 'Hey, naughty boy, look at me in my sagging, fraying, beige-coloured, oversized bra. Bet ya didn't notice the bow'

crack up, without a doubt.

but my degeneration into the bespectacled world is so absolute, so obsessive, that i wonder. am i reclaiming an abandoned self i once had, then let loose to wander around the earth? maybe that's how ghosts are made, our thrown away selves still living but pushed away by one's physical body, so that they, pale wisps, while their way around the planets, waiting, and perhaps they glow faintly in moonlight. she walks like summer and talks like rain/reminding me there's a time to change/yeah yeah yeah. seems like i've got drops of jupiter, after all.

I thought i could introduce him to me newly... Read this, this is a book i'm touched by; listen to the music i like; notice, on my dresser, letters from people who love me. These are the gaps to be filled to rejoin us completely. ...

We got ahead of the guide, leaving his flashlight behind. Evan strode faster than I, and all at once I lost him in the shadowy pitch of an underpass between stalagmite and cavern wall. After a silence, he whistled, but it echoed and came from everywhere. There was a fork to the trail, I didn't know which path he'd taken. And I thought: This is where we'll always be. Ex-lovers navigating through darkness like bats do, guided by emotinoal echoes, now sensing, now losing the warmth.