Once again the absurdity of my inner thoughts overwhelms me, and I want to crawl out of my skin, escape my ugly, awkward flesh and be a skeleton, naked and anonymous.

You might say that death has relaxed me.

The shadows of the room pool in the lines of our faces, draining our eyes of hue. "There's nothing left worth saying.

What wonderful thing didn't start out scary?

I think for a minute. Watching my wife fade into the distance, I put a hand on my heart. "Dead." I wave a hand toward my wife. "Dead." My eyes drift toward the sky and lose their focus. "Want it...to hurt. But...doesn't." Julie looks at me like she's waiting for more, and I wonder if I've expressed anything at all with my halting, mumbled soliloquy. Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.

The moment the light went out, everyone stopped pretending.

He is spent. His mind is mercury again, its brief surge of humanity melting into an oily residue on its surface, and he no longer understands the feelings he felt in that strange moment on the overpass. But he did feel them. They did happen. They rest on the murky seabed of his mind, buried under sand and silt and miles of grey waves. Patient seeds waiting for light.