This is a vignette from my newsletter.

“The problem is we’re both grandiose,” you said.

It was dusk. We were circling each other like vultures.

I told you I was going away for a while, but that I’d bring you back something really good.

“I don’t want that,” you said. “I want this,” and pulled me to you.

We were so close already I was almost on your lap. My legs draped on you, my hand on your waist, the other in your hair. I could taste the citrus of your shampoo. I could count the hairs on your neck.

The street was empty but utterly alive. I could feel the ground splitting. It might as well have been my heart.

I wanted to kiss you but you wouldn’t let me. “Why do we call it passion when a better word for it is madness?” I said.

“You date too many married women,” you said.

I didn’t say, Being with you is like fighting a wave.

Futile.

Necessary.

I didn’t say, It could be you, you know. Despite the drowning. Maybe not the you today with the ripped jeans and lustrous grief, but the you five years from now, the one who collects random bottles from yard sales and has my mother’s phone number saved to her “favorites” in case something should happen.

The one who tells me, Every letter is a love letter.

“I hate when you write about me,” you said. “You don’t get to own what happens to us.”

Oh, darlin’, I did not say. I could no sooner possess you than the sun would stop at horizon.