While you were sleeping, I dreamed about impossible tenderness and the advantages of proud solitude, and beside you some drops of pain silently rolled down (you didn't even notice). Other time I went on exploring distant, unknown and even dangerous paths, met people who told me things I didn't want to know, I lied to them and to you, and gave myself away to everybody who ever wanted to play with the new toy. While you were sleeping, I thought bad things about you, I blamed you for my pain, insensibility or boredom, because somebody does have to be blamed. I exploited your confidence and naivety to carry out my dirty intentions, when I got what I hoped for, I didn't ever think about rewarding it anyhow. I tempted strangers and made use of their kind-hearted and believing souls to get what you deliberately forbid – just a split second of admiration, really passionate adoration or just undisguised love. While you were sleeping, with malicious joy I composed believable but absolutely false answers to your questions, and you received them gratefully. While you were sleeping, I laughed about your wish to subdue and humiliate me, I laughed about your pride and your craving for inaccessible superiority and your memories that meant so much to you. Then I pulled myself together again and tried to be cold, as the coldest season can be. Once I even considered how to hurt myself in the most painful way to prove to myself that my nightmare turns colorless in comparison with the physical suffering. But you were sleeping, and in artificial rays of street lighting I noticed that in your innocent, sleeping face were neither anticipation about my presence, nor regret or love. In a splendid dream went to worship a god with your face. You were so indifferent, your childish expression just hid the awful lines in your soul. Silently I went away (you didn't notice, as always) and left a note: "Sorry about the plums in your fridge I ate, probably you saved them for breakfast. They were so sweet, so fresh and so cold."

photo by Arnis Balcus, 1997

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