i'm sorry it's taking so long, by the way, but there is a project underway, something extra-special, by way of a really really late birthday present or something akin to a valentine. i think, though, you will be happy when you get it, and i am going as fast as i can.

all day i have been daydreaming of driving through the desert, of when we went to sin city and had our way with it. of the drive that inspired me to write, of how the sky broke and it was as all fire and clouds and rain all over us, a reprieve from the 119 degree heat. it was like the whole world was starting again, and it brought life back to us.

but i loved that drive, as hard as it was. the long visual expanse of light brown and white and a steadfast too soft blue stretching out beyond my event horizon, the way my skin pricked and crawled all over itself, the discomfort maddening in a background noise kind of way, but reassuring me that no matter how dead inside that summer had left me, i was alive, with the pricks of a thousand acupuncturist's needles, i was alive and it was all over my skin...the low end throb in my temples after a few hours, like my heartbeat lost its way home and decided to take up residence in my skull.

the way the road ahead looked like dali clocks and how the watering in my perpetually dry eyes made the landscape flying by look like a drunken fingerpaint canvas is what i keep thinking about, and how when i hear certain music especially , even though we didn't necessarily listen to it on that trip, it pulls me back there.

it's my desert music.

i'll lay in bed sometimes, watching the whir of the ceiling fan, and i'll daydream i'm with my friends again in the desert. i'll pretend i don't hear the kids screaming in the street, or the laughing of the boys who are impressing each other with cigarettes and cursing slang. i'll lay there, sideways, holding my pillow like a lover and just dream about the car and the smoke and the sky.

it always makes me miss you like nuts, like the world is ending miss you. and that always makes me think of what we are doing with ourselves, how we got here, keeping close contact through code and telephone cords. sometimes i get a kind of panicky feeling when i think i've forgotten the way your eyes crinkle when you smile, or exactly how the dance goes that you used to do for me behind the counter at work. sometimes i miss being able to pull on the pig tails at the back of your head while i'm sitting in your passenger seat; sometimes i feel guilty that i wasn't able to treat you and him as generously as you both did me. i miss our middle of the nights and i miss our black and white moon pacific ocean and our boyfriends lined high on santa monica boulevard and our invisible ray guns for the leather and night time sunglasses of sunset blvd. i miss your cloves hanging in my clothes when i got home at night and i miss knowing that at 630 everynight i would get the phone call that you were on your way.

i lived for our evenings last summer, when the rest of my world had turned into grainy forgotten photographs, you brought things into color and focus.

i can't think of anything more to say than i love you.

oh, and this.