It's peaceful now, on the outside. But there is no end to the tumult inside of me. My very soul feels restless, and even aches--somewhere deep in my throat, behind the dip at the base of my neck, where tears ache and gather. I want to be so much more. I want the world to be so much more. I want some miraculous release or outflowing which will somehow give meaning and vision to my world and those around.

Unleash this grief, this deep I keep nestled inside-- I know it is there for a reason, and I know it is beautiful, but it presses, and it weighs, and it calls out and nothing answers but faint echoes from far away. Words fail, I fail to find the right ones, they simply are not there-- but I want. I want I want I want, and that much I know, and that much I do not have, because I want so much more from life, and from myself.

But how much of me first must die? How much of those I love must atrophy while I sit and listen, watch--helpless. How much stagnancy and pressure can I take before I snap all responsibility, all duty, all love, all caution and run somewhere--free?

Give me my wine, and give me my cigars, and give me my silken-shirt, with no underclothes and no regrets. Tomorrow, this summer, this life may be duty and motivation and hard, bloody hard work-- but tonight I will dine on the delectability of what I choose not to regret, and tonight I will sit, dry-eyed and pensive, and tonight I will watch the world burn.

The world has changed, since last I looked on it. The trees are different now; maybe greener, maybe fuller, maybe happier. The water--it slurps cheerfully along its swollen river banks and tows the winter's casualties with it. The earth crumbles and pastes, instead of stiffly yielding spittle of rock and ice and dust.

perhaps it is just me that has changed. perhaps it is just my world which has turned upside down.

Because I am leaving once more. Am I not always leaving? Am I not forever saying "goodbye, it was nice knowing you, you are dead to me now?" But this time will be different. This time, I will come back to what I know to be dead to me. This time, I will return and live in the emotional decay and graveyard of people I have already resigned myself to leaving and never looking back to--and even one person, whose memory's gravestone I will visit every time I do anything I love in this city. One person who can never live again, whom I cannot afford to give life to, whom I have no choice but to bid farewell, forever and goodbye.

I had my last dance tonight. It was good. It left me missing. I will not bury this one thing. I may put the others aside in a tight little box, all secured against the unsteady tide of reaction, but this one I will leave in peace, as it left me peaceful.

Or as peaceful as a world turned on its axis ever can be.

Can I just sleep now, please?