You strike me at the most perplexing moments- when I play a song that you hated or when there is a silence that settles under my rib cage. I like the emptiness between the spaces you laid out for me and I wonder often how you hold yourself now that we don't have one another to lean up against. Then I am reminded of your spine, and the ridges we built so carefully around our beaten selves; how they imitate our arches. Lately I’ve been noticing how resiliency is something we can conjure up, like dreams of the dead and wistful feelings that lift us out of the dreariness of the day. And it saddens me because I think it shows how good we are at wasting time, and at night I dab the oil of my jasmine at the throat and watch it drip, and I find myself wondering how far have you moved on? When did you begin on that path, really?