You talked to me, but you didn’t. I could see you having these two-sided conversations. The things you wanted to say to me. And the words that actually came out.

A thousand suns rise from my chest.

It was selfish what I asked her to do, even if it wound up being the most unselfish thing I've ever done.

Because for that day, I really did become Lulu. Maybe not from the film or the real Louise Brooks, but my own idea of what Lulu represented. Freedom. Daring. Adventure. Saying yes.

And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging.

Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found―and then lost―so many things in Paris.

Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me. Re-create me. Won't you, won't you won't you re-create me.