It is raining and my lights are off and it's quiet, except for the rain, except for the people above me moving.

And I am still sad.

It isn't like me to be sad two days in a row. I'm generally a really happy person. I carry around this distant heartache, always have, but usually I keep it covered up with cheesecake and friends and laughter.

There's so many wonderful things out there, so many god damn beautiful wonderful things, candy and food and people who really do care about me, people I love to god damn death, so many fun things to get out and do and I'm gonna do them, today, as many as I can to get over this sadness but god damn, y'all, god damn.

I'm good by myself but I'm better with you.

I'm better being able to make you happy. I'm better holding doors open for you, listening to you laugh in the blackness of a movie theater, walking down an aisle in a store finding the most ridiculous things. I'm better finding you gifts. I'm better cooking for you than I am for myself.

And my natural immaturity will win out at the end of the day, my delight in the simple, my love of people and books and things and feelings and words and the way the keyboard sounds, they will all win out and you know that feeling you get when your backpack is too tight and you pull that little clasp and everything loosens just enough so you can exhale and you jump on the balls of your feet to resettle better than before?

That'll be how it will be and this sadness will fade away again, deep into me, this sadness that won't ever go away just hide and run, marbling everything, making me appreciate everything even more, all that god damn good stuff like strawberry sauce and your eyes when you laugh and your hair and the memory of that afternoon in your bed when, down the hall, you screamed at your television and it woke me, that memory no one else has, the memory of your smell that other people now share, the memory of your touch that other people now share, they can have that, they do have that, I have no right to it anymore, no sole ownership to the way you breathe heavily when you're touched right there, it's joint custody to others but that memory, that memory of your bed, of you packing, of holding your hand in the car with long and winding road playing, the ballpark at midnight, the pool in the summer, that is mine and I claim it, forever, part of the sadness, part of the god damn greatness of life.

If I am single, forever single from here on out, a body moving through the days, making people smile and laugh and loving everything because I know how special it all is it will be fine because I have that.

Those memories.

Your teeth.

The way you cried into my neck.

The moon light and the street light and foxes.

I have that and I am not giving it up.

They can hold your hand in the car, too, they can take you to creeks, they can swing with you on swing sets, but I have that.

I am going to go take a shower now. I am going to dress up and go to a store and shop and get a milkshake and be as sad as I want to be because I know it'll recede and at the end of the day I'll still fucking smile and I'll still laugh and I'll still love you, all of you, every one of you, every bit of you, because the one god damn thing memory does is make you perfect.

I'm going to go now.