Sometimes you can feel yourself mid-missed connection. You realize it while it’s happening, knowing only the way you’ll think of it later. It’s like living inside a memory. You lock eyes with a stranger, twice. You imagine you see kindness there. Or understanding. You imagine an entire relationship- fights, dinners out, afternoons on the couch. You imagine their bad habits. Their sexual strengths and weaknesses. You remember each other, fall in love, and let go, instantly, like air rushing out of a balloon. These encounters are wishes or projections. They’re nothing. They leave you feeling stranded, lonelier than before, like the way you feel upon waking up from a nightmare: alone and such a big, wide bed to fill.

I am afraid of the way that people come into my life and go. I picture myself in a crowded ballroom, a rotating cast of characters waltzing by, then disappearing like ghosts. A haunted mansion of friends and lovers, and me, standing at the center of it, waiting for the waltz to end. What does one do when the music stops, when there are no new faces to greet, no eyes to meet with constant gaze, no steady stream of partners? What will I do with myself then - a head full of crowded thoughts and a closet full of ball gowns?