I like listening to you talk, A once said to me after I described Nala, the street cat I often feed, as a queen who has been to war, weathered but regal. It’s the precision I like.

I remembered what B once told me: It’s your sincerity that gets to me, and thought about how my sincerity has sharpened into a blade, precise and lucid. I felt an arrow shoot cleanly through two sheets of paper. And now here I am, without the need for escalation, suspending myself within the erotic tension of all my desires.

For a long time I’ve resented my inability to remember, ie. if I do not take notes, my life does not exist — but I understand simply now, thanks to Hass, that this is a gift too: that one is able to pass their world through the “cloud chamber” of language, such that it emerges on the other side “charged with desire”.

That is to say: the note-taking is not a substitute for memory. The note-taking is an act of transformation. More than life itself, it is the singular thing that ties me, us, you & I, to our compulsion to live.

*

Our desires are distinct because we name them.

We stood side by side beneath a shelter. I wasn’t sure what we were queueing for. I’m so happy. I haven’t felt this way in a while. I felt the heat of her palm against the back of my neck, then that look we used to share—definitely the best date I’ve been on for a while. She stopped there, said nothing more, not even sorry. My rage rose quickly, twisting its sharp end into the back of my throat. I couldn’t smile. I couldn’t find the words. Erupting with a tear, which I could trace by a hot trail that pooled finally within the crease of my nose, I asked, Then why didn’t you try? You didn’t try, and now it’s too late. This isn’t possible anymore.

It hurt me to say that. But if I hadn’t hardened myself I was afraid I would let it all go. I remembered what it felt like for me to become liquid for her. For me to take the shape of her want.

*

She walked to the side without looking back. I moved forward towards a bright window as I watched her dig her toes into the pavement. It was a money changer we were queueing for after all. Only the illusion of a sheltered stop. What I had imagined to be relief simply turned out to be transactional once more. We needed something from each other. Then and now. She was lonely. I had questions and a body primed for desire. The money changer struggled to give me exact change. He kept giving me denominations that didn’t exist anywhere else. This isn’t right, I gestured repeatedly, you still owe me. I turned around and she was no longer there.

*

I feel J nudging me to wake as my alarm blares. She runs her thumb along the crown of my head as I settle into real life, hazy with the memory of indifference. I look up and out the window. It was raining in my dream. For a moment I imagine the smell of rain, and the taste of money and dirt in my mouth, but I push the windows open and let the crack of light press against my eyelids. It isn’t kind, but it’s sobering—which, I suppose, is a sort of kindness too.

I glance over at my phone; of course, it’s her birthday tomorrow.

*

The rest of the day I spend moving easily between work, time with J, Twitter, and playing fetch with Nomi. At the back of my head I wonder what this 27th will bring B. I wonder about the dream. I wonder about whether it would be strange to drop a message—and how late, how early?

As I write this I remember that I’d forgotten to send D a text on his birthday this year. 11th June. The final Saturday I spent in Korea. I can find it in me to forgive myself for that. In time I suppose I will forget to send B one, too. And how beautiful might that be, the final cleave that will set all our parallel lives free?