I tell myself stories in the dark, Anya.

It helps. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe it makes things worse. Or keeps everything the same. Which is a different kind of worse.

Anya I long to reach you only because I know that you are unreachable. It keeps my longing in a chrysalis state, a cocoon state. Nothing ever grows, it simply hums and palpitates and aspires toward growth. It is the shadow twin of growth.

Anya I couldn’t reach you in life, not your deep and true center, and I cannot reach you in death, so my relationship to you remains one of thorny and perpetual expectancy. To reach you would mean a betrayal of dreams. Or perhaps they are illusions masquerading as dreams. How to tell the difference?

If the center is where grief lies, I have been spanning the perimeter, dancing the same lame jig for far too long. Someone once wrote you should proceed from the dream outward. What about proceeding from reality inward?