in absence your body persists in my longing as image persists in the retina, giving illusion of constancy. no, I don't think you should return: what has been written between us, has exposed us to each other in a way that won't allow me to imagine how to live with you again I wonder how do you see me now. more clearly perhaps, then if I were actually there to interfere with your image of me. since writing the above line, I've been out all over the city, but to you I might as well have still been at home, you would have never known, I could have just resumed writing with lines following seamlessly, not indicating that I'd gone out, or that there is indeed any other world outside of this letter... as a child I often wondered, did the characters in a book that I was reading keep going on with their lives whenever I put the book down? whenever I read a difficult or captivating passage over and over, did the characters wait for me? next