The windows are blocked. Richly colored tapestry covers the three-inches of glowing pink insulation keeping out the daylight. I am warm in the warren I’ve built. I like it that way. Regardless of season, I exist above eighty.
Onegin plays silently in the background, a mute staging to the clacking of the laptop keys. It is the winter of 2007, already. Like clouds, the years slip past. More and more, I don’t notice them quietly drifting by. My hair remains the same, my eyes unchanged. I am as gaunt as I was thirty years ago. Age, as well as time, seems to slip past me unnoticed.
I am alone again. The choice was mine. I was the one staring at the broken thing bleeding in my hand this time. I am a fool. Alone I wanted, and alone I’ll be; my lover now my work. It’s my singular passion. Everything else is just an orbiting satellite around it. Were there to be someone, she would have to be the same; quiet, un-needing, focused on her passion.
Only occasionally would we speak, this someone and I, perhaps when we were hungry and wished to eat, or hungry for the outside world. Our home would be warm and comfortable, inviting to the friends that visit often. They enjoy the food, the wine, the stories we tell, she and I. They stay late, our friends, and then bid us both a good night. We see them to the door, and then we return to our world. A few moments more are spent in blissful isolation, lost in our own separate worlds of creation, until the hour strikes and we magically find ourselves wound perfectly around each other. Every night ends in this way, our two worlds becoming one, with secrets and stories passed that are saved just for the other and no one else. The intimacy we give each other alone is enough to fuel our passions, but the night knows more.
And then we wake. I find that the television still lights the room. Onegin has refused the beautiful and clever Tatiana. He is alone. His life is an eternal winter. The sun slowly dies somewhere behind the shuttered windows.
Alone.
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