My dearest, I do an awful lot of hemming and hawing when I sit down at the end of the day with the intention to write to you. I sip from my icefilled glass. I fold my hands. I put my forehead in my hands. I check stats. I hear crickets and a child shrieking. I wonder if I'm going to write anything at all. Maybe this evening (I think to myself almost every evening) I won't, why should I? What is there to say? I rub my upper arm reflexively. I inhale fragrance, dabbed on after my shower, the shower after my workout. I have a waist again. Today I bought an outfit on sale - black formfitting skirt, prim but for flared kneelength hem, earthtoned leopard/jungle-print top. I have gotten in such good shape that not only have I dropped several sizes, I enjoy trying things on. Clothes that I couldn't possibly have considered several years ago now fit beautifully on me. It is a genuine pleasure to greet my image in the mirror and feel quite pleased and accepting of myself. I look nice, I'm certain I do.

I read more of the Sewall biography of E.D., had a session with mimi that ended, finally, where I hoped I would - intense, unmistakable, all too fleeting, but oh so worth it that transformative, transcendent sensation, fleeting, and yet leaves its imprint. I don't wish to live without it now. After so many years without. It gives meaning and focus to my existence, it really does. It's just that special ingredient, among other special vital ingredients, such as setting down my thoughts to you, dearest Muse; such as taking my rhythmic walks in nature; such as feeling my body move, increasingly lithe, graceful, and strong with each leg lift, crunch, pushup. With every delicious morsel of fresh wholesome food I taste. With beautiful words of others that I read. With visions, darling, of beautiful handsome you, whom I remember, the very few recollections (but burned in my mind) that I have of you, augmented amply with my imaginings, mostly of you in an idyllic setting, stripped of suit & tie.

Ah, and still I wonder - what am I going to write to you tonight? You're so hidden away from me, like the moon before it's risen in the dark night sky. I write to you, though I don't see you, but I know you are there behind me somewhere, beyond the eastern ridge, and even if I don't happen to be looking, you will draw yourself above me, poised as in love, and I'll gaze up at your beauteous glory shining with utmost radiance and I'll reach up my hand, lightly touch, your face so near my own my love, poised above me in paralyzing shudder.

And perhaps that won't do, as a post, so I'll compose myself again, think what to write to you, wonder what to write, what to possibly say, dearest love, to you of the celestially vanished sort, there but invisible, save for, very late at night, towards dawn, coded flashes, meteoric streaks, shooting stars, falling down all around me, high high above, forever and ever and ever out of reach, there nonetheless, while I sleep, and clutch my pillow, in the pitch dark room at night, and later of the siesta