I wrote this for you—well actually I wrote it as if I were you . . . as if we were two individuals with a melded soul made of hot, molten rock. I wrote it for the both of us to drink as though it were a fine whine worth savoring for hours . . . floating to the sky on the bubbles that rise in tall glasses as we lose ourselves. We have this connection, almost parasitic, almost mutually beneficial, almost always confusing and painful. We’re opposites as different as dark and light, good and evil, but somehow we’re so similar that it’s disgusting. As if we were vomited forth from the same womb, the same diseased crypt of sadness and pain . . . raised by the same drones, who in a certain glitch, pushed us to the same place at the same time where finally we discovered each other. I pretended for a while that you didn’t exist, I was above you, and I was different. I failed. I wanted so desperately to relate to someone that I drained my soul into a martini shaker and handed it to you with tiny, paper umbrella. You poured it into a cracked, plastic cup and two became one, I became you and we became a God and a Goddess, trapped in the body of a frail hermaphrodite, dying everyday with every sunset and being reborn every sunrise. We shared this body and I gave you permission to explore it, you refused to dirty your hands with the immoral temptation. Denied damnation and sucked in air full of perfectly mutilated virgins at peace with your decision to neglect us. Lust was love and love was lust, both inarticulate fools created for our indecisive entertainment. Teasing dreams of all we could never have plagued us like recurring nightmares with no ending, forever swirling into an abyss of longing. What I couldn’t touch—what was just out of my range, my reach, my train of thought. You. Tortured. Me. Every day time ticked by slowly with a crooked second hand that moved backwards. We made love without making contact. Had staring contests without ever opening our eyes and the heart we shared shriveled ‘till all that remained was a cold, rotted block of wood. Together we used four steak knives to cut it in three—one for you, one for me, one for us. We devoured the betrayal and acted, as fools, naked and burning our tongues on the white-hot redemption, fingers tingling as we chased it with a strong shot of reality.