When we get home we're bigger strangers than we've ever been before.

I can see the moon in my rear view mirror.

I feel like pieces of my skin are being pulled in every direction and pinned down onto tasks. Plans. People. Expectations. I'm trying to hold it all together, and ignore the excruciating, gaping holes in my flesh. This is called endurance. And it can't go on forever.

The day of the rapture has come and gone. With little more than a volcanic eruption in Iceland and a cut from shaving my legs. I was prepared for this one. Drove around until two-thirty in the morning to various religious institutions, parked outside, rolled down the windows, absorbed faith by diffusion. Ate MilkDuds. Thought the thoughts that have been thought long before me. Waited for the world to end.

I'm in love with who I think you are.

Maybe it's a sign. I've got blood on my hands. Blood dried across my cheek. I can taste it on my lips. Blood stained shirts and scarves and the heels of my running shoes. Bloodied kisses.

Round two. Knock out.

I woke up with the memory of your hands around my waist. I forgot about the sickly exchanges we've had. The infection I let spread. Our disease. Metastasized. As ill as it makes us, the wretched faces we make, the contortion of our hands into walls and the forbidden intertwining of yours and mine, it's rooted in something. Something that feels a lot like... One word, one syllable, sounds like shove. Off a cliff. Off the ocean coast of... Well.

I'm scared that it's not me. It's touch, feel, look, hold, near, close, kiss, need. But not me. I want it to be me. And I want it to be you. And it want it to be simple. Why can't it be fucking simple with us? We need to communicate. Or maybe we need to separate. Fuck. I'm trying to be selfless. Being selfless is painful. I want us to take some cough medicine, and a day off work. Some vitamin C. A hot water bottle and a cold washcloth. Ice cream and old movies. Or we can sleep. As long as I'm near you. Can't it be fucking easy? You sleep there, I sleep here, I bring you home made waffles and your wounds heal and I learn how to trust. It's us.

"Hold me."

"No. I can't. That is, I'm afraid I might not let go."

It didn't rain tonight. I was hoping for a storm. I was hoping thick, humid clouds would descend upon my house. Then there might be electricity in the air. There isn't any electricity in the air between us, is there?

Not anymore.

Thirteen hands. Idle hands. Squeezing hands. Empty hands. Pins and needles hands. Scarred hands. Blue hands. Wrinkled hands. Persistent hands. Piano hands. Calloused hands. Working hands. Sympathetic hands. Wringing hands.

I want to be silent.

"So far you have read about the deaths of 557, 017 people - one of whom was killed by a streetcar, one of whom died of bronchitis and one of whom died in a barn with her rabbits." Timothy Findley