if The remanence of this story is prologue; it is of our own ruin. we are fire

We don’t burn books here, neither diaries, nor the letters we never intended to post, nor the letters we never intended to write but did.

It’s what’ll end up burning us.

How do you begin to chronical a requited affair that happened out of space? It wasn’t a secret, and it wasn’t always from afar, but it happened out of time, out of touch, but in mind. For every letter exchanged, dozens were unsent … existing neither read, nor intended to be.

Was it obsession? Is it still? Perhaps this is the prelude to a final act we’ve already lived a hundred times, because we’ve already grown old together a hundred times. I have a feeling she’ll let me know besides the “why [expletive deleted] … are you talking about me in third person? Talk to me.”

Anna has … how does one put it.

She has a way.

this is a story about two people living an imaginary life together for over twenty years before they open their notebooks, diaries, journals & confessionals, and talk about it

We found bondage in the written word with a decadence matched only by the desire to be bound to each other. Our bodies simply extensions of literary devices de jour: sexual epizeuxis with a world on pause and entreats on repeat.

It’s a terrifying prospect mapping a relationship that burned us both and continued to rage in absentia. For what was unknown was not unknowable. For over twenty years, we explored a platonic conception of unconditional love, an affair of minds, and sex without limits. Through query we found error in that conception, frustration in its boundaries, and something more.

“We can do better,” she’d say. “We cannot be together … but we can exist together. Fuck restrictions and fuck restraint.”

“We can work it out?” I say, knowing full well what she’d say.

“Yes.” She said, “it’s obvious,” pausing.

I [expletive deleted] love her pauses.

“We write.”