and in the early morning of Valentine’s Day, asleep in my childhood bedroom, I dreamt of kissing a man that I, by contract and construct, love at a distance, sitting across tables in silence. Wrestling each other to the ground off some old scenic couch, strangers and friends buzzing through the warehouse around us, and you told me how much you were trying. You told me that you are weird, and that loving you is hard, and you stuck your fingers in your blond hair that way that you do, and you told me that you’d been trying so hard, learning to let people close to you despite the labyrinth in your heart, despite the spidersilk and bulletproof and kiss-and-go. I kissed you on the floor in a leg lock, and your complete lack of reticence hit me like a truck in a sexy way. You told me you were still learning, but that you were making progress, and you got up to take a piss. I sat on the couch again, and someone I did not recognize came up and sat near me, and I had no words to explain how I felt, except the mild desire to punch something, but in a good, cute way.