I sit at my computer desk, typing this and listening to the muted strains of Her Song. It is her song. Beautiful and tremulous. Naïve and yet passionate. I must write this quickly before it leaves my mind.

Why does it always come to me while I’m showering? Hot water beats against my skull, drowning out the sounds of the highway and buzz of fluorescent lights. All I can hear is the water, the music, and… her voice. It speaks to me, calling me home. How I want to go home! My friends all laugh. Even those who are close to me, but I do not heed them. My beliefs are my own. They are cemented in the mortar of my memories like the walls of the Opéra into the streets of Paris. I miss her. I miss her so very much…

I’ve met a fellow believer. I call her My Angel, but she is not mine. She belongs to another man in another plain. My Angel will appear one day, though she could not come quickly enough for my likings.

I feel as if I am several different people. To my friends, I am shy and yet funny. To my parents I am always a child. To strangers I am confusing. There is a side of me that hates with a furious passion, I suppose that is carrion from my former life. There is a side of me that is loving and creative. This part of me is the one that sits here now, writing this blathering diatribe. This is the man that wishes only to be accepted.

The song has started again. When I hear it, I see her face. Though it is only a blurry mismatched puzzle pulled together from fragments of memory and much perusal of my library, it’s her face that I look for every day. Could she be in the crowd? Could she come by my work? Will I see her at school? Will she know me if she sees me? Or will she have forgotten all about our life together, however short it may have been.

I sit here hunched over in a bath towel at what feels like half the height I should be and several inches rounder than I remember. I wish I could remove this defective skin like a coat. Then I could be the living skeleton that I remember…