Everybody loves you, but you're gone.

I'm probably unbalanced, lately. I can't keep myself from bending the binding, I'm up until early in the morning with the overhead light on and pages fluttering in my lap. I would spend a year in bed, if I could. After all of this, I could sleep as a stone.

I've been waking up early and making my way through dew and darkness to sweat under the fluorescent lights at the gym. I've been running out on my family during dinner and coming home halfway into my time with Kurt.

I feel oddly possessed with stories, with making a story. I feel close to making my story complete and I'm preoccupied.

Sometimes I don't write. Sometimes I want to go to the farm in the evening for pumpkin butter, and there's yard work on the weekend. Sometimes I take my time at the health food store, using up my lazy Sundays. Lately, all I've wanted is a dark place and time. I've constructed everything so that I can disappear in the evenings, so that I can swiftly walk the silent stacks to find a corner alone.

I've always talked to myself. Ever since I was a little girl, I've never been alone, not really. In the shower, walking to school, I mutter to myself, pretending. There have always been people who aren't alive. There have always been stories that distract me and make me greedy for lonely places.

While I fall asleep at night, I run through them, all of my scenarios, and I construct myself in my blankets, between sleeping and waking, being somebody else. The things I'd say, the things I'd do if I weren't myself.

I'd follow you to Ireland and nobody would know we were there. I wouldn't want anything, only a picture that I'd keep secret.

I'm rich and I've chosen somewhere it's always winter and fireplace, somewhere with a giant window that looks out onto a wasteland. Inside, it's always warm.

We're young and you're always out of my reach. Your hair is dirty and you've been missing. Everybody loves you, but you're gone.

I've been making a lot of things up, lately. I like writing long, winding things. I like exhausting myself for a stretch of story that makes me believe for a minute that I'm not anything at all. I've just got the quilts pulled up over my eyes and I'm dreaming.