"A Little More Time on You"

This is an experiment with form. The piece is a rumination on love's redefinitions as we mature and experience love in different ways.

I've been trying to find a word to tell you how I feel about this. It's trapped somewhere between terrified and confused and disheartened, I guess. No dictionary on earth has a word for that; I’ve checked. I can’t possibly be the first one, the only one to consider that all the things we love will leave, and will not come again.

I do not love this cigarette, but if my car's AC put it out I'd set it-or another one, it makes no difference-burning lovingly again with the red Bic lighter I also do not love any more than the yellow one that sat next to it when I exchanged two dollars for the butane it contains.

I do not love this song, but if I heard it playing in my head, or in the little coffee shop-the one I pass along the long way home-I'd more than likely stop and tap my foot, and listen to it through. And then I'd tell myself through closed eyes and a little wistful half-smile that it's my favorite song, and that I'll listen to it as soon as I get home-after I've washed off the day and made myself dinner.

But when you decided that you were grown, the flame we made in the palms of our hands when they swung together between us as we paraded down the sidewalk, started to die. I thought if I held you tighter I could bring it back, but I just choked it further. I tried to play our song again from the gummy CD on the Walkman you bought me for my 10th birthday with the peeling Charizard sticker"the day you said you loved me and I hid in the closet until everyone but you had left so that I could say it, too. That day played again on the inside of my eyelids, and when I stuck my head full of uncombed hair through the magenta curtain that smelled like dust, the fluorescent lights overhead had shaken out all of their light, and all I heard was silence.

It sounded absurd in my head when I thought it just now, so I can only imagine how it will sound to you, but I think that's it; the word I was looking for. To the extent that it's possible, I think I felt silent about all of this. Perhaps it would have been best if I had stayed that way.