Do you remember eyes, skin, hair, mouth, do you remember love? Maybe I'm a fool and there was none at all. Maybe-you're so cold and quiet now, that could be true. I know it's not. Maybe I tried too hard to make you something you are not. Now the only thing you are is gone. Replaced by this empty pit inside, reminding me of the lack of you. If you were there what would you do? Ignore me, say you'd seen my nude flesh before. Same old same old getting you down again, trapping you in some imagined caged place there not by me but by you. Only you. I could never tell what you were thinking and too often you wouldn't share, some imagined obligation or fear to me, of me. I'd rather not be with you at all than to hurt you. But you could never, would never see that. Would not Let me prove it was or was not true. You decided who I was and shoved me away.

And yet through all this you were my best friend. Knew me better than anyone else ever dared to, cared too. Was there with me through pain and joy, mostly pain, it's not easy changing the world like we did. Now it's over, that too. A common understanding of the pain to have your work taken and broken. Shared so much but yet fought each other instead. Was it easier that way? Cheap stabs at each other to slice away pain we couldn't control? Eventually it all became too much. I'm pretty sure it did. Though now I sometimes doubt that. Maybe, maybe I could have stood a little more. Too keep my friend who could look and see what made a smile on my face when no one else could. I take out old pictures of myself. I see-in them-you. You took them of me. A picture, what you saw in me. What we did that day, what you said to me. In that picture I see how much you loved me. You were there with me, unseen. You was there always, maybe too much, but there just the same. Or maybe too little in the right ways, and too often the wrong ways.

Do you remember what you said on that last day?

I do.

Would I take all the words back and stay?

Three years is a long time to know someone so much.

A long way to go and then find yourself without. Was there beauty along the path? Maybe we forgot to notice. Maybe we forgot to eat and ate each at each other instead. Maybe it's all gone wrong and we can't make it right now. Maybe I can't forget. The passion is all still there unchanged. Do you remember skin, warm scented, eyes turned black, mouth oh your mouth, on my skin, wanting only you. Passion, I love you as much as writing, my art, my passions, your mind a hot burning flame warms the intellect, the soul-my intellect, my soul. It's all still there. What do I do? Where do I go from here. I tried to keep walking but I have no heart for it. I never wanted to leave you, but it hurt too much to stay.

What do I do? It's three years today.

copyright 1998 raven victoria erebus