Mariann and me, well we stopped taking the pills at the same time, and opened our faces wide to a cold December.
To a cold January.
To a cold--well it wasn't that cold but I felt myself waking up to my hands gone numb every morning and I would look over at her and how she could sleep with her mouth closed, and I took the suggested vitamins. Told myself the vitamins made me happier but I still ended up cutting off all of my hair as if to say,
well.

I guess I wanted to say that I was a brand new shiny page in Vogue for her.
That I was something she could hold on to, but she broke up with me, and I don't know if it's about breathing with my mouth open, or if I cooked breakfast in the wrong way, or if I laughed too easily while watching the news, or maybe she liked my hair longer,       or if she didn't need me anymore to be free of the pills all by herself.

She would send me these romantic text messages from time to time, afterwards, and I would stop the car to read them, and breathing would get harder for me. I could smell her there in the car. I would lean over and touch the passenger seat. I would clench the passenger seat and whisper the words you told me would help me, and I wouldn't respond to the messages.

And I became a certified camper and would camp all the nights that I didn't have to work in the morning. I would drive myself drunk into the mountains and set up the tent in the dark, and lay in my thermal sleeping bag, and bite off all the nails that I had left. I'd re-read the messages from her. Save them for good, then delete them for really good, then wish I hadn't deleted them and then
I would conjugate Spanish verbs until I fell asleep. In the morning, I could feel alive because it was really cold.
And that's what I was going to tell you, Sharon.

That even though.


That all of this.


That I still have hope, and that sometimes the hope has nothing to do with her, and I know that's a start.