Or if she rejected me again, then I could take pictures of her fucking in a horse costume and blackmail her into loving me like she should.

I don't make threats," she said. "I make reality.

I am being watched. My stalker is smart, just like I would be.

If that was the last time we met, I was satisfied with my parting words. But if that was the case, why was I crying on the way back to the train as if I'd experienced a death?

I licked my lips where I could still taste their glove's fabric. Bitter leather and sweat. The taste of being alive.

I screamed at them all to leave me alone, begged for their mercy, but they feasted until I was picked clean like a carrion would.

Under the lake by Anvil Creek, a man has been frozen much like another man in the same wilderness had been frozen, in this area of Alaska where silence is the loudest sound.

As I’ve learned from life, happiness sometimes only greets us in fits and starts. For tragedy often follows merriment. Without strife, we would not know the true meaning of gaiety. That’s what I like to tell myself to ease the pain.

People can drift far away from themselves but eventually tether again.