Sunday night and I’m in the kitchen, washing the dishes that have piled up for far too many days. The wine glasses have reached the point where it looks like I’ve had a party. The biggest items are the last to do, the heavy pot I made pasta in, the wooden cutting board I sliced the cherry tomatoes on. No more room left in the drying rack so I leave things on the counter. The Brita’s empty again. All I do with my days, it seems, is drink water, piss, and refill the fucking Brita. I’m still thinking about my conversation with Clémentine. About the point of love, where we want it to take us, what we want from it. Everyone I’ve loved, I’ve loved with obsessive focus. I need an object, any object. If they resist, or try to leave me, I dazzle them with the power, the never-before-encountered power of my love. They have never seen love like that before, been loved like that before. It is irresistible to them to be loved in such a way. I point everything I’ve got at them, I shoot it all, until, one day, it’s over. I can’t stand to be around them.

It feels like Clémentine is helping me confront these things more than Esther.