Five-thirty in the morning you wake from an achingly repetitive dream in which you are telling an ex-boyfriend: "this is it, we're finished, you are looking at the last moment of this relationship," as you count out twelve pairs of socks from a basket, over and over again, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...and so on, back to one, two, three, four, five...And again. And again. You just keep counting and breaking up, and counting, and breaking up.

Something is burning a hole in your stomach. You open your eyes to the formless dark of this solitary hour before dawn, run your hands down your body, feeling the softness of your own skin, feeling grateful to occupy this skin. But what is this sick feeling? Oh, yeah, there was that misguided trip to taco bell at one o'clock this morning after drinking three beers at a friend's house and watching Punch Drunk Love. The kind of movie that makes you want to feel love now or never, the kind of movie that makes you want to smash up all your old keepsakes, burn your letters, forget you ever wanted to hold or be held by anyone, curl up into yourself and get good at being alone, because it's a terrifying world this world, this world of feeling, but you will have to crash or crawl your way through it somehow.

And you remember that yesterday that ex-boyfriend, the one from the dream, told you that you are the one--and you've heard this before, you nasty little heartbreaker--that you are the reason for his bitterness. That somehow you failed him. That you ruined him. And you know that this of course is beyond unfair, that you can't ruin someone, that we're all responsible for our own lives, that his life is his own precious and miserable gift just like yours is and he can do what he will with it, that we're all made of blood and bone and have to do what we can to carry it, that you are the one in the dream who is screaming inside, that you are the one in the dream so full of rage and disappointment that you feel like you are being pulled apart, that you are the one in the dream counting, and counting, and counting.