I'm All Alone, But I'm Not Lonely.

I Miss You Terribly Sometimes, But In General I Go On Living With All The Energy I Can Muster. Just As You Take Care Of The Birds And The Fields Every Morning, Every Morning I Wind My Own Spring. I Give It Some 36 Good Twists By The Time I've Got Up, Brushed My Teeth, Shaved, Eaten Breakfast, Changed My Clothes, Left The Dorm, And Arrived At The University. I Tell Myself, "ok, Let's Make This Day Another Good One." I Hadn't Noticed Before, But They Tell Me I Talk To Myself A Lot These Days. Probably Mumbling To Myself While I Wind My Spring.

No Matter What You Tell Me, No Matter How Legitimate Your Reasons, I Can Never Just Forget About You, I Can Never Push The Years We Spent Together Out Of My Mind. I Can't Do It Because It Really Happened, They Are Part Of My Life, And There Is No Way I Can Just Erase Them. That Would Be The Same As Erasing My Own Self.

Time Is Too Conceptual. Not That It Stops Us From Filling It In. So Much So, We Can't Even Tell Whether Our Experiences Belong To Time Or To The World Of Physical Things.

A Regular Wind-up Toy World This Is, I Think. Once A Day The Wind-up Bird Has To Come And Wind The Springs Of This World. Alone In This Fun House, Only I Grow Old, A Pale Softball Of Death Swelling Inside Me. Yet Even As I Sleep Somewhere Between Saturn And Uranus, Wind-up Birds Everywhere Are Busy At Work Fulfilling Their Appointed Rounds.

At Times Like This, Adults Need A Drink