Hello, again.

-It sounds like you're trying to use all this anger and negative energy and bend it to your own purposes, said Teak over dinner, last week.

That's right,

I say to her, as I have so many times, to myself,

I understand, from when my lover died ten years ago, grief is a kind of poison. I'm not going to sit in my apartment, and wait for the black dog to show up.

-But the black dog is here with you already. It already has its teeth in your throat.

...

I can't recall what I said to that. I think I just listened, and let her speak of when her heart was ripped out, not so long ago.

But something is breathing down my neck today, for sure.