and dissipation too. You have had lovers and spouses, been scarred and raped, run your hand against the bristle of a cheek, the fluttering smoothness of a belly. At times you have surrendered to the non-thought that comes of giving yourself completely, and at others you have coldly plotted a relationship's termination. The memories of actual events and conversations fade, but the punctured silences remain, like stringy bits of food caught in the teeth. The tiny bell as it pirouettes on the string that hangs from the ceiling. The faraway blare of a garbage truck. The smothering cicadas. The ache of a flag as it flies alone at night. You have bid farewell, and dove to the bottom of the sea, so far down that even you with your flawless sight can see nothing, and yet you can feel the brush of membraned creatures against your skin, sense the cowardice of the fish as they Lin Page 3 scatter. There must be a meaning in all of this, a meaning for your presence here. If only you can grasp it, much like one must grasp the colors that elude black and white, then you will be gone, and the journey would continue. The clouds open up; lightning shakes your vision. The Stranger's black robe is in tatters, and he lets it slough from his shoulders. His bare arms are ridged with red veins that could easily be tattoos. And yet the arms are thin, hairless, like a girl's. He approaches and you stand your ground, for on either side of you, in every direction, is sheer drop. The white snow is so far down from where you are poised on this mountain peak that it could very well be dust, fairy dust perhaps, if such a thing existed. Maybe it does exist -- you wish you could remember. No time. Your fingers are interlaced, unbreakable, committed. You hold them before you, to ward off, or to initiate prayer.