They rented a hot, airless, offending little place by the rail station, nothing more than a sweaty box with a slow ceiling fan. It was the first time either had lived with a lover.

He didn’t want work, only books to read and poetry to write, and there was money enough to last the summer.

— Depressed, she said after a few weeks.

— There’s no harm in an empty room.

Her heart hoarded images found in the stumbling verses he distilled from the juice of their youth, all of them illegible falsifications etched with divine traces.

Lady Chatterly in milky pearls, she climbed astride the lascivious impulses that nightly disturbed their dreams.

— You’re hurting me… no, don’t stop!

Long legs over broad shoulders, his fingers in her mouth, nearly a fist. Scattered fleshy polaroids depicted their strong bodies in moist embrace.

A shadow play of toil and trouble, evenings spent drinking in moderation, if blackouts can be called moderation. Love taught them a bitter lesson about practicality amid the squalor of their wasted potential.

This entry is part of my journal, published January 16, 2013, in New York.