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Trogdoristo El Leon, Aug 29 2:29 A.M

hey boo, it's like 2 in the morning now. i couldn't sleep, so i checked my email on the off chance that you'd written to me already....pathetic? yea. i miss you. i wrote this for you, i might even post it on literotica. donit worry, your names not on it. i love you so much. and once again, i miss you.

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I couldn't sleep.

I can't most nights, you know, but tonight seemed especially insurmountable. Any number of reasons I used to work against my finding rest found themselves in my mind tonight: it was too hot, too dark, too quiet, too noisy. I'd finished a new book, started another one, gone online; I'd even tried my old childhood method singing to myself, and thought of those lovers watching the moon across a distance montages.

I miss you.

When I first turned out the light and attempted to sleep, I dug through my bag for some photographs first. I arranged one that I'd wanted on my little board of pictures, and gummed another to the mirror of my vanity, but I kept one to just look at while I lied there. It was the one from the Bronx Zoo, our one big outing this summer I guess. I took it at the end of the day, as we sat down to give my feet a reprieve –hey, I tried to wear sensible shoes, and I didn't complain much until the end—and I told you to go sit on the railing near the benches we were on so I'd be able to take some memorabilia home from the trip.

I love that picture. It's one of a couple I guess. Some of them I shot from further away, some closer. But the one I chose, one that I made sure to print just right, with the help of elaborate at-home technology, is where you're leaning back on the railing, and you're looking at me with this sweet, beautiful smile. You look a little unsure of yourself, not only because you didn't want to pose for the picture, but also because you know how much you reveal in that smile.

It was about five or six o'clock when the zoo closed, so the sun was setting then. But the light in the picture shines slightly from behind and to the right. It makes you glow. I'm sure you'd complain and say it makes you pale, and that you'd be protesting my appreciation for the picture, but it's so damn...perfect. It's you how I remember you best. I have a lot of pictures of memorable events, or cute ones of us together, and hey, even ones where you look hotter, but in that picture, I can see you actuallysmilingat me. Atme.It's how you look after we wrestle and we're lying there and you go, " You're so beautiful", searching my eyes, and being completely corny, and it makes me uncomfortable to have you look at me so deeply, because yousee me so deeply. I see in that picture how uncertain you really are sometimes, without all the knowledge and the debating skills, and the worldliness. All that's a part of you, yes. That smile is underneath all that. I could say things about fragility, inner flames, and all that jazz. It's even simpler. It's the part of you that only I get to see, that you trusted me with over months and years of joking and fighting and cuddling. Whether it was intentional or not, I'm keeping it to remind me of what I have in you.

I studied the picture for a long time, as you can see.

When I finally turned the light off, I propped the picture up on my bed stand, and turned my alarm clock toward it, so I could see it in the dark. I wanted to fall asleep looking at you, so serene and trusting, whatever way I could. It doesn't really work, especially when I take off my glasses, but it's a romantic gesture, no?

I did a lot of things when I continued being unable to sleep, like getting up to pee, kicking around the comforter, and lying upside down. I even took one of your stuffed namesakes and curled up on the floor where Kiwi used to sleep, another reason tonight is so difficult. (The floor was hard and cold.) I just felt so alone and restless, even anxious. It makes me want to cry when I think too hard about the things wrong in my life, and then sometimes I find that I ignore certain events way too easily. It was late, and I should have been tired and... I really just wanted to talk to you.

So I wrote this.