Agatha: don't tell me what to do

Agatha: I'll have whatever kind of day I please

Rio: 😢

Agatha:

Agatha: I'll have an okay day

Agatha: but that's all!

You are yet another person to fold away into the maps of my mind, to preserve forever in my imagination, so I can live there with you and let myself withdraw from reality once again, forget that I am nothing, nothing at all to the real one.

Goodbye. You always take the weather with you, Rio--know that this time you've taken all of me with you too. Thank you for teaching me how to fly, and how to breathe, and to hope and dream and sing again. I will divorce the corporeal you, and cling to my sacrosanct sacrilege marriage to the you made of sunlight and words and collected memories, sweet sounds and wafted scent and warm, warm eyes, the only you I could ever really have. We two will build our perfect picket fence life together, slow dance to Cohen and tango to clinking coffee spoons, hold each other tight, entwined and tight-lipped and silent and aching, and the two of us will wait for your footsteps on the pavement.

I will put aside my studies of the ripple of every taut muscle of your swanback, and the gentle scratch of your nails on skin, and your warmth and fire and beauty and power, and I will learn to paint from memory again.