[Izulde]

Candles flicker, illuminating the opaque darkness of my tiny apartment's living room. I've been listening to the Korean K.I.S.S.'s "Without You" on repeat loop for the past however I don't know how many hours. Strewn at my feet - empty bottles of Redd's Apple Peach and Redd's Apple. Apple by itself is chewier, denser - dark amber in color to the true yellow of Peach Apple. The yellow that keeps the memory summoned up transfixed in my mind. Mind is much nicer than brain, which is too biological. Too matter-of-fact.

I signed up for Match and OkCupid today, including the $30 or $28 or whatever fee added on top of Reply For Free, in vain hopes that it might entice replies. How much flew out my account? $90 between the two for the next 3 months? Something like that. Distractions you see, hopes that it might deter me from Nichole G. But it's not really about her when you dig deep, Herr Doktor Reader. Liesener? Mein Deutsch ist schlecht. Ich habe viele vergessen. Not forgotten is the past, the one who - if not top of mind - is always lurking in the Styxian subconscious, ready to surface at the slightest impetus. I could drown myself in the Lethe and my shade would still not blot her out.

And what, seem to ask the bobbing and bouncing candles stirred by a faint late autumn cold wind that seeps through the uncaulked window, is the instigator, the barreling alligator that brought back her memory to conscious, forefront, foregrounded attention?


Heyyyy... hoooo.. heeyyyy....

As I sit here and think,
about all that I'm missing

All that I'm missing oh yeah....
I've got everything that,
I could ever ask for. But you

An overseas friend, who himself found a wife further abroad, recommended two women - one from his wife's land of origin, the other from my own. Neither appealed in the least - I have very specific standards. Far too strict for a 2, admittedly, but damn it, I have tasted the glory of being with a 10. You don't understand... Wait, let me back up. No? Finish telling the beginning of the return? Oh, fine.

In any case, in politely telling him that I was going to keep looking, I went to her Facebook page to fetch pictorial evidence of the memory the next woman I date is competing against. Only to find her page completely locked down. Strange. So I Googled her.

Only to be slammed over and over with results that informed me she'd transferred her successful freelance writing career to an even more successful Instagram influencer career. That she became such a glittering light does not surprise me. Because... well... let me drink some more and move to back then.


All my past time is spent,
wondering how you've been

wondering how you've been oh yeah...
but the more that you're on my mind,
I'm just lonely and blue (can't you see)

17 years ago, during one of those lovely Midwestern summers that almost make living in this region worth it, sun, water, and fire entered my life in the form. Talented though I am, all I can conjure in my inebriation are inadequate clichés that diminish what she was and she is, even now when we're both in that stage of life that society calls middle-aged. Therefore let me simply say she was a golden-haired, blue-eyed model and a writer only a half-step below me in ability.

She fell for my mind and my writing, the same as every relationship before and the one since her. Remember, I am by any measure physically plain, if not outright ugly to the majority of women. So to have a young woman this stunning attracted to me... well... it's the type of paradise reserved only for the most elect of saints and martyrs. When you're someone like me, with someone like her, as I was during those incomparable months... your life completely changes. People treat you with much more respect and courtesy. Whereas previously I'd have been ignored or regarded lightly, suddenly attention was on me and I was taken seriously - really for the first time ever, outside of teachers who prized and encouraged my intellectualism.

We wrote together, co-crafting sagas and tales that spanned time and space, delighting in the brilliance of one another. Her technique was not as refined as mine (I'd dedicated years to development of my writing voice), but the raw talent, the ability that can never be taught or forced into being - that radiated from her as it did from me. Like attracted like in that sphere - a connection I've only had twice in my life. The other time is not important - it was when I was a teenager and didn't yet recognize my gift.

And of course, the bodily delights, which I will not dilute or profane the memory of by detailing here. I shall only remark that the bedroom interludes brought me to an unshakable belief in the Divine.


Why can't you be with me to hold me tight.
Just being with you
will make everything better and bright

I wanna have you by my side,
you always make it right.
(And without you my heart starts to cry)
How will I ever go on,
how will I stay strong?
(Do you see without you, my soul dies?)

The breakup - her decision and no fault of my own - devastated me. Worse yet, she still adored me. So we continued for another year in that foggy land of fondness and will-they/won't-they get-back-together that still pains me so much to this day that I can't watch it in film or TV without going into a roaring rage that careens into ceaseless crying. Then she went to a prestigious graduate school overseas while I wandered, broken, from school to school in the States - restless and wanting what I'd lost.

Since then, I've never heard from her, though I checked on how she was doing periodically - watched her ascension as a leading freelancer, which sparked self-hatred but was still controllable because it was journalism and I have long considered fiction my own private territory. But to watch her sail effortlessly from that to an even more glittering influencer career, awash in wealth and acclaim...

...I want to scream so that the world hears, "She was once mine!" Scream it again and again until it burns permanently in the long-term memory of everyone living, make it a fact that springs forth readily from their lips. To know that it happened, that we happened, and our journey should have continued together. We would have been one of those power pairings - culturally conquered the world.

She is still my only Muse, the only one who the thought of can pour blood and soul from mind to fingers and on to screen.

Were I to show anyone images of both side by side, eyebrows would lift, a murmur of shock at their *physical* similarity. Am I, to borrow from Nabokov, trying to break the first's spell by incarnating her in another? Well, not literally - remember, Hum had a minor justification - Anabelle died of typhus in Corfu. My Mercedes, (legal) Beatrice, (legal) Laureta yet lives - though I am certain she neither thinks of me nor perhaps might not even remember me if the question were put to her.

Which would be fitting.


I stayed up all night,
remembering what we had
And I can't sleep a wink,
cuz thinking of you makes me sad
(yes you do)

I can't seem to shake you off my mind...
Just wanna go back in time to just press rewind

I wanna have you by my side,
you always make it right.
(And without you my heart starts to cry)
how will I ever go on,
how will I stay strong?
(Do you see without you, my soul dies?)

You're all that I want, you're all that I need.
So why don't you come back. baby. Please


Fitting because what am I? A random bookseller in a pandemic, in an age of Amazon, in a town that most maps callously leave off - so insignificant it is.

I told somebody once that mediocrity is my greatest horror. But that's a lie. My greatest terror is obscurity, and I'm running out of town to prevent a life of such promise, potential, fizzling into mere dash line between two dates - not even worthy of a historical footnote.

And yet, I love her still, would love her even if she were dethroned, cast down into a momentary blip of social media stardom.

She is the girl's name I sing in every song with one. She's the inspiration for every female character I've ever written. She makes me want to be her equal again, as we once were.

But I have only scattered computer files of partially done novels, half-written short stories.

Even the duct-taped book beckoning me, written by some professor no one has ever heard of, speaks of a more accomplished life.

I'm tempted to toss into one of the candles in a spasm of drunken rage, to curse it to oblivion. But as I pick it up with that intention, the cover opens, and the inscription gazes up at me.

"Just know, you're not alone. Read the first few chapters. I'll see you next week.

-H."

...Fine, H. Fine. You cared enough to write that; I'll care enough to read.