not love

Of course you’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die someday, I heard in my sleep, and I gasped and sat up in bed, so sad and so scared, and I cried for what felt like forever. It doesn’t even matter, because every little thing matters. I worry we’re approaching the singularity, and that’s beautiful, but it’s also so cold there, because everyone’s seams overlapping might as well be a void, just white noise and no clear signal anymore. I don’t want everyone, not now, not yet, what if not ever. I’ve tried to tell myself it doesn’t matter, that we’re all the same in the end, but then I realized no, that cannot be right, it comes from James Dobson, I’d read it in a book, searching for a clue, hoping I could recognize the look of love if I ever found it—his spurious claim that if two people just worked hard enough, if they just worked hard enough, which I’d taken on as my own belief, God damn him. I’m hooked on a feeling, in every time and every place, even if it’s a different person entirely…