I have not spoken to my muse for nearly a week. Is this selfish? That I have not spoken to her? Or that I notice the loss? That I resent the voids in my life where she chooses not to be?

I feel betrayed and am angry at her betrayal, but surely she feels the same.

I almost failed third grade. The last day of school, walking home, I was so excited. I yelled across the street and asked my friend Brady how he’d done. He told me to shut up and kept walking, staring at the ground.

He used to call tits, ‘twat’. Years later just after dark at a swim team camp out, I remember him reaching in to pinch his girlfriends nipples. “Gimme some of that twat.”

“Come here Jenny.” It was a stern voice and we turned to see Jenny’s mom standing just outside the campsite. Jenny walked over to her mother with her arms crossed, staring at the ground. They walked away quickly in the darkness.

Later that night, those of us sans curfew got together for our traditional game of truth or dare. Junior high truth or dare was so exciting, sitting across from your crush. I had a crush on Meilee McCairn. When it came to my turn, they dared me to french kiss her. I told the truth instead.

I was talking to a friend, spending barely any mental effort pretending she wasn’t there, when she snuck up behind me and poked me in the back. “Hey you.”

The poke caught me off guard but I could smell her. I can recognise her scent anywhere, usually from a distance: she smells good. I told her so.

“Thanks.” Pause. We hadn’t talked in a couple of weeks. Not odd for ex-lovers, but odd for us. We were friends, good friends, who talked daily, even when we’d broken up in the past. “How you doing?”

“Good,” I said, half-lying. I was better. I think of her less, and when I do, I’m less angry. But I am always angry. That may be why we haven’t talked. To be spiteful, I said “I’m doing good. How about you?” I smiled.

“I’m doing good,” but the hollow space between her syllables echoed across an empty heart. I recognised the sound.

We made polite excuses, and I went back to my conversation. She went to get a drink.

Later, she sidled up to me at the bar to say goodbye. I could smell her. She was intoxicating, always. “Well I’m leaving.”

“It was nice seeing you.” Our words were punctuated wiith that hollow space. And forced restraint.

“It was nice seeing you, too.” She leaned in closer to whisper, thought carefully about her words. “Would you like to come lay beside me?”

If you didn’t know her you wouldn’t understand the submission in her words. Usually, she’d say ‘you can do this, if you want…’ Always the position of granting power, but here, “would you” showed deference.

“I’d like that.” Pause to think about the progress we’d made not being together. Think about how angry I still was. Think about how good she smelled, how nice her skin felt. “Maybe I will.”

“We can’t do anything.”

“No problem.” I laughed. I was serious.

“No. Really.” She miscalculated the effect her charms would still have. “I’m seeing someone.”

“Then I shouldn’t come over.”

“I can leave the dooor open. You can just slide in behind me.”

I recalculated the effects of her charms. “No. If you’re seeing someone, I shouldn’t.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“I’m not being rude. I’m being good.”

She said she was leaving and we hugged. I whispered I loved her and said “take care, babe.”

Her face scrunched with disdain. “Take care, babe.” ‘Take care’ was my parting for friends.

“I said I love you.”

“No you didn’t”

“Yeah, I said ‘I love you, take care babe’”

“Babe?” Hurt surfaced at the edges of her face. “Whatever. Nevermind. I’m getting upset.” And she left.

As with all lovers’s positions in the 90s and above, this is a meta position, a modifier, a way of altering any of the existing positions of lovers. The meta positions, together with the multitudinous positions of lovers combine to form every conceivable expression of Love known to man, and the skilled practitioner can play Love like a glorious instrument of the heart.

The position of lovers, number 97, occurs just out of sight, around a corner, behind a wall, when an acquaintance has temporarily moved away, the one lover grabs the other by the face and kisses them urgently.

“I will always love you,” they might say. “I’m not sure why I said that. It’s confusing. It’s always confusing with you, but it’s confusing with others, and I guess I’m just looking for new experiences. I just wanted you to know that. I will always love you.”

Following these vows, the lovers should part as urgently as their secret embrace and continue about their separate ways.

The smell of death isn’t decay. It’s silence, a pungent silence. When I came to, blood was rushing to my head. The car had flipped and the seat belt had pinned me upside down. The dust was clearing. The sound of the desert breeze was punctuated by an intermittent scrape I took to to be a still-spinning wheel. To my left, that pungent silence.

I’d heard that sound many times in my life. I’ve come to recognise it. I gently tilted my head to see Carrie. It looked like her face had smashed into the steering column. There wasn’t anything beautiful left on her face. Just a curtian of blood.

And then I heard the weeping, a disdainful sobbing, repressed moan. It grew closer to the car, but I didn’t hear the gravel crunching. It approached from the drivers side so I turned to look back toward Carrie. A woman had knelt to lean into the car, and she was crying mournful tears. Her hands were white like ivory, and opulescent, and her tearful eyes were as black and sorrowed as I have ever seen eyes. She gently pushed back Carrie’s hair, caressed her face. Her lips moved as if she mumbled under her breath. She kissed her fingertips and then placed them to Carries lips. She turned to look at me, and her face saddened, but it was the most beautiful face I have ever seen. In an instant the sound of her weeping receded. I did not hear the gravel crunching beneath her feet as she left.