09.18.04 - 11:29

i can hear him in his room, the one next to mine. he sounds happy. i'm glad. it's dark outside. what do you hear? sirens, honking, laughing. cars whooshing by. it's saturday night in the city. my boyfriend's in st. louis for four whole days. i'm feeling a little lonely, a little silly for feeling lonely. i can hear the 22 pulling into the bus stop. i imagine i can tell the difference between the northbound and the southbound in the doppler melt of the sound. can i really? who knows.

i feel very close to tears these days, but not unpleasantly so (most of the time). when jeff bagwell hit a home run to put the astros ahead tonight, i felt my eyes well up. when brad lidge nailed down his 24th save, i felt the tears again. it's not sadness, but it's not happiness. maybe it's just the reality of feeling again. i haven't felt anything for such a long time. sometimes it feels good to cry.

i can't tell you, though, what brings on the bad tears. sometimes it's absolutely nothing. think, she says, think, he says, what could possibly trigger them, what could possibly trip that chord in your conscience? and i think and i think and i think, but nothing comes. i really believe it's nothing, i say. and they look at me, knowingly, because of course there's something that i'm not open enough to see. of course. but i don't know, i only half-believe that's the truth. because these days it honestly feels like nothing, a lightning bolt out of the blue.

i'm growing older, and you are, too. no wiser, maybe, but more comfortable in my skin. i think about you, all the different yous who have drifted in and out of my life. i haven't forgotten any of you, i haven't forgotten a day or an hour or a minute. i doubt i ever will.

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