Dark houses and open windows with chrome green houseplants to keep me company...

Sinking so deep into my bed, and just letting my muscles give way to the evening as that dark air creeps in through a cracked window... music humming and a ceiling fan whirring and things being only a few degrees short of perfection.

Perfectly tired and prefectly busy; a prefect student with his bike leaning oh-just-so-perfectly in the garage--car conveniently tucked away from the firing line of those rising gas prices...

The cool night said to me that soon it will be Autumn and soon you will be 23, and soon things will take another turn and you'll be off hitting that old road again on whatever adventure chooses to find you.

Almost perfect, but still missing... that one person to share it with.

Because all the wonderfully warm evenings with their cool breezes and dim streetlights are nothing but wasted if not shared with another; though for now, looking inward for satisfaction will have to suffice.

Sometimes when I'm sinking downard in that whirlpool just before the brain drifts off--that moment when one can completely and fully enjoy the comfort of a bed, when there is no hope for return to consciousness--I think about her, and what it was like.

The night envelopes me and then I'm gone.

On the observation deck of Tokyo Tower, staring out at ten billion little stars twinkling on the wrong side of the sky; so beautiful and so unbelievable, and so perfect because not only was the night one of those mysteriously warm Spring evenings that just shouts: "Tonight is that one-in-a-million," but because she was somehow, impossibly, standing there, next to me.

It was ... breathtaking.

I'm still standing there. On that observation deck 150 meters above Tokyo, still looking out the window from which the world stares back, heart still beating that blood through my temples; still standing there, still holding the person I loved.

What a fucking feeling it was, in that dark, dark room... there were only two of us.

And I'm still standing there.

Standing at the airport, hands in pockets--planes fueling on the runway--and her, turning slowly and making her way--amid all that confusion and rush and mass of human beings the stuffy, compressed airport atmosphere--to an intercontinental jet, walking out of my life forever.

It was the last time I saw her.

I'm still standing there, on that observation deck... by myself. Looking into the void. Only a ghost remains, and somehow that stupid cliche tourist attraction, the Tokyo Tower has become the focal point of all my emotions relating to her.

Maybe it was the tears or maybe it was just the night. Maybe it was nothing at all.

...

Usually when I write something for you guys to read, I'm listening to music and typing away, and I know that it's impossible for me to really accomplish what I want: which is make you FEEL the FEELING I felt. I feel it, when I type. It's cathartic and beautiful and everything I want it to be. It's for me.

I can't really channel my feelings to anyone.

In words it was pretty much impossible to even begin to describe the swell of emotion in the pit of my stomach that Tokyo gave me, and the knot in my gut, driven by my heart, that the memory of my friends brings back... of those picnics and those long walks and talks and everything.

But as impossible as that was, I truly, honestly, can't hope to explain-even to myself--what it was like to be with her, and then what it was like to return home... to something wholly changed.

No one will ever know how much I cared, and how awful it was landing in Omaha on June 25th, and seeing the change I saw.

And I'm not mad.

And I'm not sad.

I've dealt with it, and I've been dealing with it.

...

I'm just still sort of standing there, watching her walk off.