Clotho is seen only at dusk.  

Lachesis is ever invisible.  

Atropos…well, dead men tell no tales.  

It’s not that she didn’t love you, it’s that it didn’t matter that she did. Would have been better to just get used.  

The inverse is true, too, I did love her, I just shouldn’t have. It was a mistake. But what a miserable conclusion, to know that you can love incorrectly and that you can receive love to no avail. So love is out. The hippies were wrong, big surprise.  

But where does that leave us? Love is not the guiding factor. Can’t be trusted. Shoots you down a ravine or whatever poetic bullshit you want to put on it.  

So no love. No love. Weird. Who could conclude such a thing at 30? Shouldn’t I have learned this before somehow? What’s it mean that it took so long? Yeah, there was Leah, but we were just kids. Didn’t know anything, nothing at all. Thought the GOP would die with the boomers and that global warming would kill us all shortly thereafter. That’s the level of dumb we’re talking about. So yeah, couple of stupid kids, didn’t know shit. Can’t make a big conclusion about love out of that.  

There was that other one too, but in hindsight, it’s sort of the same. She loved you but treated you like shit. Some swine with a cock and no degree. Real great. I loved her back to boot, I even said it first, but hey whatever. Something about that one kept me from concluding anything, though. Not sure why. I was old enough. I guess I was just reeling. Motherfucker. 

How many more times is this going to happen? What’ll I even be able to say to the next one? There are all these patterns lodged in my brain now. We meet, it’s cute. We get drunk and make confessions about adolescence. It’s adorable and intimate. We binge-watch shows, The Office, BoJack Horseman, whatever. We get familiar. I lick her asshole and she kisses me. I show her some of my writing and she thinks I’m a genius. She says she’s never met someone so smart. She thinks it’s cool that I “rose above” and got out of my hometown; I feel embarrassed that I’ll never really be able to bring her back and show her off. It’s like I’m from nowhere but girls always seem to have a family. The sex gets better, the kink kicks off. She starts writing with my help. Something goes wrong, there’s an emotional trip or a relational hiccup—whatever it is that those things mean. Things get weird, start to wane. I look to the past. I get nostalgic. She reassesses her options. We breakup and it’s awful. We fuck again and the sex is a time machine that takes us back to the golden age of our relationship—whenever that was. There’s hope but things are not the same.  

She tells me I’m great; I tell her she’s beautiful. I tell her she didn’t deserve to have those bad things happen to her; she tells me I’m a star and I’ll go far. It goes on like this. Enormous promises are made. Covenants are sealed in cum. There’s so much hope and so much promise. We get drunk on each other’s affirmations. It’s amazing and it feels better than any of the times before. We fuck and smoke and talk and pop pills and watch arthouse dramas and go out to eat and I pay and she’s a princess and she loves the attention and I love feeling so needed, so necessary and our son will be the next Jesus and we both know it.  

And then things change. First all at once and then slowly. It’s like the shock from an atomic bomb and then the waves of radiation that follow, creeping their way to the limits of the blast radius. Hard to put my finger on it. Except it’s not. You can always identify the blast. It’s the radiation poisoning that gets you. It’s my fourth or fifth girl and I still haven’t invented any kind of lead shielding. That invisible sickness gets into everything. Things change and I’m furious. She’s scared. We make-up but it doesn’t matter. This is my last monologue.  

It’ll all happen again and that’s the worst part. I am a puny human and I will forget all of this. She will be a footnote in my neurological ticking and tocking even though she inhabited the whole of my brain for years. All of my organs are elastic and they’ll bounce back. When you quit smoking your lungs go pink once again. You bite your tongue and it hurts so fucking bad but it won’t even scar. I’m not sad that I won’t get over it. I’m sad that I will get over it.  

Next time, I’ll know how fleeting the whole thing is. She, too, will send my cock to heaven. And she’ll be amazed by my grasp of the human condition after I show her something from Criterion. Moreover, she’ll feel amazing in my arms. While in my grasp, she’ll tell me how safe I make her feel. Meanwhile, I’ll compliment the taste of each of her orifices. I won’t believe my luck at having found someone who makes me so happy. I’ll have never felt happier before. I’ll think to myself, “Damn, she’d make a fine mother to my children.” All of these thoughts are headed my way, it’s the surest thing. After four or five rounds, why would they stop now? And the thoughts will be real, they’ll be serious, and goddamn palpable. They always are.  

All of these memories will blur together into a generalized morass. It’s the gayest thing I can think of. Nature’s greatest trick is keeping us so forgetful. If we knew about our inconsistencies, if we stared down the cyclicalism of it, how could we live with ourselves? The answer is obvious and unclear at the same time. I won’t stand for it anymore. This is all bullshit and this is my last fucking monologue.