When I was a girl, still yearning for shelter and struggling with the occasional bout of self deception, I held my heart in the palm of my hands, feeling its cool edges and multi-faceted angles. I created my own chaos. I lived in my eyeballs, and prayed for the revelatory murmur of a distant drumbeat.I still have my moments. I sat outside yesterday and cried. The sky was gorgeous -- the heavens looked as though they might have opened and burst. I tried to imagine what Jakob would have said. Tried to imagine his soft milky eyes. Even in my mind they remain something elusive, his skin ethereal to the touch.

In my youth I dreamed that time would not touch me, but now I acknowledge more than ever that luxurious element of self preservation known as memory. It is my birthday. Eighteen little candles flicker on my cake. I feel like that flame -- fragile, heaving my body in every possible direction, trying not to lose myself in the wind.

Sammy came over today. All I could do was smile. It was miserable. I was lying in bed pretending to read Kant, when he came in, threw his coat on my chair and made himself right at home.

"What's up, Abby?" he asked nonchalantly, as if his presence here was nothing out of the ordinary.

I looked at him. He hadn't changed. He never changed. His hair was a bright shade of blond. His eyes were clear, bright, black as marbles. Strong jaw, sturdy neck, on the tall side. I reveled in his consistency. I looked to him, full of awe.

"Things are O.K...." I put down my book, and began to run my fingers through my hair, trying to remember why he had gone in the first place. It all seemed so long ago, like a dream. Time was disjointed. I clasped the back of my neck with my palm and tried to feign anger, but all I could do was smile ear to ear, brimming with a warm joy that filled the once empty pit in my stomach like a drug. It's amazing what people can do to you...

"Ah, Abby, this place ..." he smiled. "And how is our friend Jakob doing?"

"Oh, he's alright ..." I waved my hand. "Went to New Mexico. Said he needed to find himself -- I know the drill. They always end up coming back, though."

I looked at him, stared long and hard into his eyes. Remorse? They say the eyes are the windows to the soul ... Jakob's eyes were empty, as fluid and milky as my reflection is to this very day.

"Still harboring resentment? It's not healthy," Sammy picked at some lint on his shirt, averting my gaze.

"I'm just trying to walk that thin line between acceptance and apathy," I replied.

Sammy sat up again and stretched. "Hey, relax." He took a letter out of his jeans pocket -- crumbled, smudged, worn around the edges. "I just stopped in 'cause I was thinking about you. I knew it was your birthday, and I just wanted to see how you were coping with things."

I looked at him again. Then at the letter. My hands felt shaky. My breath was short. My tongue somehow found its way to my heart -- a physiological impossibility though this may be -- and plantitively began licking wounds that I thought I surely had overcome.

"He was a character. He truly was," I stood up, restless, and needing to put my energy somewhere. I glanced at the clock, nearly four. "Lets go out, get a drink, a cup of coffee, take a walk ..."

"All of the above?" Sammy smirked, placing the letter back into his pocket. "An invitation to reminisce, eh? And I thought you lived only for the future, Abby."

"You never knew me, Sammy," I picked up my purse and walked to the door.

Two old time friends. Sitting in a caf down on Main Street, discussing life and lovers. If I had described the scene like this to Jakob, he would have told me to let go of clichs and speak something of the Truth. But that's all I ever do, I would tell him. Let go and move on, let go and move on. Because if you keep going, and never look back, you lose yourself to the world of heightened idealism, and it's a much more beautiful place there, though certainly no less real.

Sammy let his words hang heavy and low, and I watched them pricelessly floating about the air, waiting for gravity to take effect. I only half listened to what he was saying. The other half of me looked at the details -- the slight flecks of a deepened shade of brown hugging close at Sammy's temples, the manner in which he moved his hands, each time reflecting a similar and indistinct gesture, instinctual, and not reflective of the pattern of speech leaking from his lips, subtle as poison.

"So I said to the guy..." his eyes lit up, "'This is who I am, and if you can't understand that, you will never understand anything.' Because that's what this movement is about -- being who you are and not giving a damn what those elitist pigs think. Nazis." Sammy smiled and the skin around his eyes crinkled like that of a little old man.

He took a sip of coffee and we looked at each other. "And how has the illustrious Abby been doing for the past three months? Bright, gamine poet of words, night dancer, mythological sex goddess ... what have you been up to, child?" He clinked my glass and raised an eyebrow at me.

"Me?" I shrugged demurely. "The usual." It sounded like a drink order, rather than a confession of self. I was not in a mood for sharing.

"Listen, Sammy: What's the point of all this chit chat? You and I both know we are not on good enough terms to get back to what things were. Why all the sudden interest in my personal life?"

"Abby ... Abby ... you must have more faith in people." Sammy smiled sheepishly. He took out a cigarette, leaned back against his chair and grinned that charming grin.

"You want the letter now?" he asked.