I woke, and all the walls had fallen around the garden of my heart. I went to pile them up again, but I had lost my trowel. I had been spinning, blindfolding, your hand on my shoulder, and I no longer knew where I was at all. You told me that I made you feel drugged, your face on the pillow, half in and out of candlelight. You talked of addictions. But when you fucked me, I was so far gone I could hardly speak.

Is this as much as we can hope for, as flawed and mortal humans? Is this the sky, the top, the ceiling? This dumb naivety, this bright and burning belief- like a camera’s flash, it banishes all shade, it declares itself, it exposes us, and you are leaning backwards, and I am leaning backwards, and we are both, somehow, catching each other.

We met- you are fighting at the frontlines of the world, and it is wearing you down like an outcropping of rock blasted by the sea. I am doing the thing I am always doing- trying to make magic into something I can sell, and failing at it. We are, both, surprised to find another with such unfailing good humor, and strive, more than anything, to speak as though we are dying. Write, says Annie Dillard, as though you are dying. Write, says Annie Dillard, as though you are writing for the terminally ill. We are all, says Annie Dillard, terminally ill. I think of her, growing old. I track the rain across my garden, watch the boughs of the walnut tree shake outside my window, make up dialogue between a close-hearted prince and a stubborn, idealistic stable boy.

The thing is, I am realizing, not to believe in god- the thing is to believe in a single living human being, soft and dear and mortal, to believe, to believe, to believe- and everything, everything, everything is forgiven.