2002-09-12 8:45 p.m.

There is something which I love even more than pus and fingernail clippings and saying "ass rape" just to watch people squirm. That something is Andie.

While at Clear Lake, I decided to write a love poem to Andie every day and give them all to her for her birthday when I saw her at Burning Man. It did not really work out that way. Instead, I only wrote two. I figure that two is not as good as seven, but two is so many more than zero. This is the first thing I wrote for her:

I woke up and got out of bed to write down my thoughts, because I would rather give them to you like this�mixed up, incomplete�rather than a complicated description of how I felt or what I might have said or wanted to say but didn't.

Today I laughed until I hurt. I thought until I hurt. The smile broke the bones and muscles of my face as I swam in the warm lake�in the heavy sunshine, in the afternoon, in the sunset, and naked and alone in the middle of the night, just moments before I sat to write these words.

Moments seemed so right. In the yellow�saturated afternoon I held up a single leaf directly between my eye and the stabbing, buttery sun. It captivated me like a cathode ray tube or a movie screen or a long, slow game of shadow puppets. I appreciated the leaf's tiny veins, the intricacy, the pathways, the implied delicate movement of water molecules.

Each breath of air stretched my lungs in the same way that running stretches your legs or reading a book stretches your mind.

In some ways, the summer�long day felt as endless as my day's lake of thoughts�complex, layered, deep, broad.

But, when I got in bed and remembered your smell and remembered you would not lay next to me tonight, I saw with such clarity how less complete even the brightest day is without you.

Endlessly loving you,

Justin

PREVIOUS ENTRY - NEXT ENTRY