After our last show, I slept cradled by Sarah in Dave's basement. Eventually she woke up, and realised her situation, and said to both of us, "I'm going outside". And so i heard her climb up the stairs and out the kitchen's sliding glass door.

I spotted Sarah walking around the block barefoot; we exchanged glances, but she kept walking. I ran after her.

"Are you all right?" "Yes", but you are not all right, tears gathered on her bottom eyelid.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" "No," you replied hesitantly, "let's go back."

And we walked back to the house. In the dining room, she takes off the choker I loaned her, she must have slept in it.

"I will be right back" she says as she climbed upstairs. I don't want to be around when you comes back, just in case you want to be alone. I go into the basement, but leave the light on, in case you go looking for me.

At first, I wait at the bottom of the stairs; I skim over a notebook I got as a graduation gift, so far I have written one song in it and some miscellaneous notes. Our band's setlist from last night is in it, and some notes on classical guitar and veganism. The song is about youth, love, and learning; it is soaked with esoteric symbolism which blurs its coherency.

You don't come downstairs. I turn the lights off, I try to sleep. Auditory hallucinations of you creeping down the stairs come every few minutes, but it's just the water heater creaking with thermal expansion.

Eventually, after I fall asleep to dreams of abandonment and self-despair, you do creep downstairs; and you beg Dave to take you back to your car at Sebastian's house. He tries to cheer you up, I am overcome with jealousy and I feel ultimately useless. this is not all right of me to think, but I have no control over it now.

I sleep for an hour, then I finish my song about a local suicide from years ago. I have no distraction. I pack up my things and go upstairs. everyone has left. I leave, too. my car is stuffed full of amplifiers and a drum set, but I can't be bothered to drop them back off at the studio. I can't be bothered to do anything.


I saw you, yesterday. We still can not speak the same, you are still not the most understanding ear. I can still cry over you, and you are hesitant to respond to me. Perhaps you, too, seek distraction.

Your scent is still on me, and every once in a while I will catch it and remember that nothing is over, even if I try to tell you that, to make you feel better.

Thank you for caring so much, please don't try so hard to escape. These things happen, my dear, and only in accepting them may we hope to understand them.

Maybe everything will work out after all.