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?

I tell myself stories in the dark, Anya.

Whether or not they help is either of primary consequence or none at all.

Sometimes you have to walk through the boneyard in order to reach the garden.

This is what I tell myself. What I keep telling myself.