On summer nights in Texas, it’s still 80 degrees by 5:00 am as the night slides towards its last desperate hour of darkness. The humidity in places like Houston can be likened to hovering a foot over a roiling jacuzzi. And, then, during the day, you have the overbearing sun.

Late evenings, in cities across the South, you can lay on the ample cement and feel the flesh on the backs of your arms melt slowly into the concrete, pleasantly, the way butter softens on warm toast.

In some cities across the South, you can actually see the stars.

In Austin, the skies at night are red, reminding me of someone’s eyes, their blushing eyeshadow, warm, salmon colored, a rosy hue to see the world through.

In some cities across the south when you can’t see the stars, you can close your eyes and see a thousand sparkling lights, the stars of the lid.

But on this night, laying on warm cement, hands chastely folded on my chest, I could see the stars. She lay next to me. This was not a position of lovers. Lovers can never lay and fathom the sky without touching, as if, adrift amongst infinite galactic seas, you’d best cling to the one light that, at this very moment, orients the entire universe for you.

We were not lovers, neither previously, nor after, but ‘lovers’ implies conscious acts, complicit with one’s heart. She loved me, and in doing so wanted nothing from me, but at once also wanted everything.

This may be the essence of love: the frightenening oscillation between needing everything but wanting nothing and needing nothing and wanting everything. How else to describe every tentative kiss, lingering fingers, the full heart on the precipice of an empty gulf?

It is possible I loved her. At that time, I did not believe in love. And at that time, my heart refused complicity in an act guaranteed to end in some ruin. Is that not how all youthful romances end?

So I lay on the warm cement, my muscles softening like comfortable butter, hands chastely folded on my chest. I’d left the party for a moment of peace, and she had followed me out, wanting nothing, but needing more.

She lay on the cement next to me, small-talked. The world was full of Art and beauty for her, and every inconsequence filled with divine leanings. She loved Janis Joplin. She studied art history.

She rolled over on her side and cast her arm across my chest and whispered: “I don’t want anything from you.”

“But I need everything,” I could hear her heart say.

This is the position of lovers, no.23: one on their side, with an arm over the other on their back, and whispered soliloquies. Love needs no answers. They threaten revelations of non-complicit hearts.

Many years later, I called her. We on occasion would speak. I stay in contact with all those I have ever not loved. I called to tell her I was getting married, or had been married, and then the phone call needed to end abruptly. I would never talk to her again. Messages went unanswered. Emails unreturned.

Such is the cruelty of love’s conspiracies, the secret plots of hearts and minds, the greedy physical machinations. To love is to betray yourselves, your friendships, but to not love is to betray eachother. It is everything and nothing, and a frantic oscillation betwixt the two. It takes your soul and divides by zero.

And once you have heard the infinite of a lovers heart, that chord stays with you forever. How much more our betrayals?

Hate will only ever be fueled by love, but many things are fueled by hate.

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.