Staggering, muttering, wet boots on watery mud—slush splashing, swirling around my feet as it takes every ounce of heart and sinew to just take one, one, one more step. I would have taken the coward’s way out. If it weren’t for her or her, it would’ve been so easy to pop those pills, to tie that rope, to cut that vein, to walk that plank, to smell those fumes. I yearn for a heaven of empty black-nothingness. But then there she stands, and she.  

                “Snap out of it sleepyhead,” she runs her fingers through my hair.

                 Sometimes when I kiss her, it feels like I’m kissing her. The smell, texture, rhythm of her kiss contrasts that of my wife’s; everything differs except for the familiarity, fluency of the moment. When we first kissed and our bodies experienced a shockwave of passionate yearning, that same air of glibness persisted even then. It came so naturally.

                Snap out of it. Snap out of it, you fool. You only have two weeks out of the year with this one. Snap out of it, and give this moment the attention it deserves. Snap out of it.

                When with one, I always yearn for the other.

                “What are you thinking about, friend?” She omnisciently smiles, unhurt after reading my vile thoughts impeccably.

                I stop yearning for my wife, and I’m fascinated by her again.

                “You amaze me. No one knows me—know one reads me—the way that you do,” I respond back, reading her mind just as flawlessly as she had mine.

                “She does,” Morena puts the period on to our conversation.