We met in October. After baseball, during Halloween, another new apartment. You cured an old heartbreak in an instant when you bared your soul. You listened to my stories with amusement. I listened to yours and wanted to rescue you.

It’s so incredibly wasteful to spend any of the present looking back, mourning something that no longer exists. Continuing, on even the best of days, to access places better left unvisited. Do only romantics do this? Do we have the copyright on sense memories? I wish I knew. Of one thing I am certain: the magic can never come back.

It’s October again and beautifully so. I smelled it fiercely yesterday walking along the Potomac. I live near the Potomac now, can you believe it? It’s prettier here but still so foreign. The roads are full of mysteries. I am a stranger to most everyone, a knowledge that courts so much freedom.