“You don’t know to what an extent you and I are one, how much I think of you, how much I’d like to be worthy of you.”

“What happened, happened once. So now it’s best in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin membrane between us, the exquisite orange, tongue, orange, my nakedness and his, the way he pushed me up against the fridge— Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s merciless, the way it travels in and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers on the table. And we still had hours.”

“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again —”

…Such aimlessness, such depression. Can’t read, write or think. There’s no climax here. Comfort yès: but the coffee’s not so good as I expected. And my brain is extinct—literally hasn’t the power to lift a pen. I’m disoriented completely. Oh the agitation, oh the discomfort of this mood. I at the top suffer strain; suffer, as this morning, grim despair and shall suffer an intensity of anguish ineffable (the word only means one can’t express it); holding the things;—all the things—the innumerable things—together.

Why did you, June, June, So suddenly Arrive at noon In the midst of July?

I love your name. I say it again and again in this summer rain.

what I want to talk about is no longer there / it is not there

All that once hurt (healed) goes on hurting in new ways.

How I suffer. And no one knows how I suffer, walking up this street, engaged with my anguish—alone; fighting something alone.