Tonight I am tracing the contour of your body on the page, long line of your neck, moon of your hip. I’m telling you I love you from a thousand miles away, remembering my last man on paper. We were in some think tank outside of London. I was twenty and he was twice my age, studying the theories of Nietiche and I drew him every day, the slow slump of his shoulders. Somehow I believed in capturing the soul and charcoal held the origin of pleasure.

He took me through the forest and there was door without a room and I did not walk around but opened the latch and set myself inside. He told me he wanted to love me but he could not. It was simple, as simple as stopping the music in mid song, walking away, deciding not to play.

I drew the faces of children on the train, they passed before me as trees and then what I loved became objects, solid as stone. But today I found you there. Your face became a line and then a nose and then a smile. It was the laying down of everything I hold, of saying to the door here I am and walking through.