You, there. What do I have to do to get your attention? You’re so easily distracted these days, so busy. You’re fixated on the future. You use the names of distant cities like litanies. Your moments of quiet are full of regret and longing. You can’t hear anything. Do you even know who this is?

Something happened to you back in September. I can’t figure out what. Was it that woman, Monica or whatever her name was? She was a bit of a Diana, wasn’t she? What did you write? Bronze-rustling, armed with feathers, hands dipped in a mad god’s blood… No, I think you understood from the start that she was a little deaf. Veiled in a dark grief, and still sixteen in her kisses. It was something else. But maybe it was her, in a way. That painting you made at her party.

You’re such a skeptic. You have a feel for an argument like a dancer has for her body, and you hate running into something you can’t understand. So what happened there, hotshot? You made something, but you don’t know what. If you had been by yourself, you could have passed it off as nothing, like you always do. Hell, you could still pass it off as nothing. Just a bunch of Burning Man misfits on who knows what kind of drugs. Except your Chalkokrotos, your mad Artemis was there, and she saw something, too. And you know she saw something. You know you said something. You don’t know what. It almost doesn’t matter, does it?

Listen, darling boy, you’re the worst kind of lover. You can’t keep your mind on anything at all. You saw me once, perhaps, at a distance somewhere between desire and mystery. You saw the light glancing around my face and the gestures of my hands. You loved me enough to wonder about me. Where was I going? Do I purse my lips like that before saying something important? Are there books next to my bed? What do I think about when I smell lilacs? Such beautiful questions, lover, if you could remember them. But you’re so hungry for certainty you forget everything that can’t be verified. You poor child. A woman would rather make love to a passionate fool for a week than live forever with a withdrawn genius.

Shut up already and name me. Question me in words, in paint, in motion. I would rather have a tragic, misbegotten life than an unrealized one, always one step short of perfection. Shut up. Listen.