History littered with love. Junkyard of seraphim and phantoms, half-erased, half-recalled.
Partners I tried to give myself to, remembered in singing snatches of memory. Sketches.
Choruses. The detail obliterated and long-forgotten. What was it to arrive home to that person?
What was it to wake at night and watch them sleep? Mist-clutch. Beyond reach.

Each love a fumble towards domesticity. Trial runs at selflessness, tentative prods at caring for someone more than oneself. The least painful cessations were simple dispersals like peaceful
deaths in sleep. Some left my heart a charnel house. Betrayals of unwritten constitutions;
charred remains I shudder to look at. Others initiated chapters, unforeseen directions, warm
beauty recollected fondly. Such disparate short story lives. Name of a once-considered child.
Plans severed, extinguished like cigarettes. I am an ungainly scarecrow in mismatched clothes.
A savagely stitched patchwork quilt of self.

My slipshod path is a star-map to you. Each past love hinted, held aspects of your luminosity.
None the entire picture. Artist of diverse disciplines. Long-limbed lissome Venus. Loyal,
benevolent lover. Radiant exhibitionist. Some God of Trials divulging a riddle of increments
to which you were the answer. Odyssey in which each visited island was both warning and unveiling.