The air is always too thin here. And too dry. It is too hot and too cold always. It must be the weather. It is only the weather. Somebody should hold you down still. Somebody must put their weight down on you, or you will die here. Yes, if someone would only lie on top of you all these things would be better. But there is only always either snow and sun, in the weather. Either the weather is always full of the white snow and the yellow sun so you see these colors only. It makes you want only one thing and you can’t have it. This makes you want to have the thing. You can only say things.

If I cannot have you then I will take off my skin and throw it by my feet. I will step on it and spit on it while I am raw and peeled because as long as all of my skin is where I can see it I will feel safe. I can pretend you are my skin, or that you want my skin, if I could only see it.

Nobody is listening. So nobody will ever let you have them. Nobody except a child who has nobody would ever want to be yours. Peel it off.

So, now you pick up your dirty skin and walk around looking for someone else to step on you, or spit on you, or lie on top of you, but it doesn’t work. So you think there is always either the snow and the sun here. There is that at least, you think. You will wake up everyday and the air will be too dry and too thin. Your eyes are cracked and your mouth is cracked because you are so cold and so hot and so thirsty always. You stand on top of mountains and you think, so you can ask people things and they can hear you next time.

Finally, you realize that the snow and the sun could be just like you. You give them names because you have a name. They are just like you now. And this makes you feel a little better.

The truth is the snow, Seth, is nothing like you. And the sun, Sam, the sun only pretends. It pretends everything is your skin too.

The sun remembers the time you just leaned over and started kissing him on that bench outside that bar, then imagines you kissing him everywhere else, or the other times he would have liked it when you kissed him, and thinks about where else that could have happened. He only spreads out over things because he pretends everything is always you. The sun is hunched over, moving himself wide apart and he is really moist right in the middle, but nobody knows that and nobody would want to be inside him still. So he imagines you. Sam imagines you in his wet middle, his center opening up and closing up to let you in. He feels rivers gushing out of him, and there is no water in him, but he always feels the sensation of rivers gushing anyway. His cells moving towards and away from his wet center want to gush out always. He has wanted you always. He has always wanted this.

This is just too much for you. Sam just feels too much. Now it is you. You do not want the sun.

This makes Sam sad. He whispers these things to the snow:

Seth, she let me wash her legs. She let me wash her legs, Seth. She had given herself to me so many times that it hurts to let this woman go, even though I know she will still die alone. Sometimes she would walk down the street with her leg bare because she knew only I could wash it without water. She had put her naked leg out for me so many times that if she were dying I would cry wildly as I whispered to her no man, no woman has ever let me have their legs like you have, like a child does. No man and no woman will ever give me their naked leg as often as you have, my child. Now the one person that let me really touch them, really have them, is gone.

The snow tries to make the sun feel better by explaining things quickly:

You think I don’t know you, Sam. You think I am not like you are, but I too can fall in love. Only I know that I too am only made up of myself. I like to make believe things too though. First drop of cold water that lands on you sizzles, then evaporates. First drop of water bursts, then evaporates. You see, you are the sun. You would need so much water to land on you that it would be impossible for you to ever really feel loved. That’s why you can fall in love at the drop of a drop of water. You see, nobody wants to save you because sometimes you look too large, and always you are too hot. They think they can’t save you easily, so it is not worth trying for too long because they have to do things and you look like you take a long, long time to save. They say they need you, but you are so hot that they have to learn to talk about you dying someday without needing to do anything at all. I understand all of this. That is why I fall in love with only what is mostly made up of myself. I spread out only as far as I am already spread out.

They don’t know how to save me, you will tell yourself. They just don’t know how. But they do love me. But they think I am beautiful. But they want me. I will say all these things to them anyway.

Yes, just say things anyway.

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