We're running out of hope, you and I. But still. It's possible to see why it might all be for the best. Keeping a distance so we'll never come to hate each other. The walls are crumbling in. The room is cold. The wolves of doubt roam free- I sleep at night.

We're running out of time. It's true. Sometimes I struggle even to recall your face. I trace your shadow's outline with my fingers, and feel the darkness settling in my heart. You're not the one to blame. I'm not complaining. Stories built in the future fall apart.

The string between us, heavy like a magnet. Opposite poles not destined to come close. Oblivion paints a mask on every corner. The ghosts of empty memories grow strong. Promise to dream of me, and I'll protect you from all the terrors hiding deep in me.

Learning to drive is like readjusting to a new body. Getting to know where it starts and where it ends. Exploring its abilities. Becoming accustomed to its weaknesses and shortcomings. Discovering its joys and dangers, limits and possibilities.

Wearing a second skin makes you clumsy, at first. Try glancing at mirrors to see if it fits. Probe with your fingers to find out where it hurts. Remember that pain and pleasure are inseparable. Keep your mind on the road, your hands on the wheel. Resist the temptation to close your eyes in fear.

Learning to feel is like readjusting to a new soul. Peel off the layers of hardened skin. Press the knife into warm flesh to watch it bleed. When stuck in emotional dead-ends, use your fists to bring down the walls. Resist the temptation to scream if the brakes are broken. To die on the fast lane is to leave this world with a smile on your face.

Silence. It's freezing cold outside, and raining. Images of a reality too fragile to be taken seriously. Late-night drunken conversations with strangers lead to the realization that nothing is ever truly left behind. Memories wrapped in tattered excuses, carried in a worn-out bag that gets heavier every day.

Those mornings always smell of solitude and unfinished sentences. To mature is to replace your soft shell with an impermeable one. Behind the walls, your screams remain unheard. Wear the mask. Smile politely. Weave the tapestry of hope around you, climb the steep staircase of expectation again, even though you're destined to fall, for there is no other way to make existence tolerable.

Keep your head high, all is not lost as long as you can laugh and weep and dream and experience, as long as your eyes are wet and the blood runs hot in your veins, as long as you can touch and be touched, love and be loved, hurt and be hurt, as long as the world resembles a vast, terrifying jungle full of monsters, thrills and revelations.

Strictly speaking, I'm not the one to blame, I was just made like this. Eternally incomplete, always missing the point, perpetually restless. Seeking the hidden pleasure behind the veils of self-inflicted pain. I say the wrong things to the wrong people, so that the bitter taste of regret never leaves my mouth.

A humorless protagonist in my life's cheesy tragedy. To avoid being left alone with my self, I fill my days with strange faces, I am drawn to the warmth of unfamiliar bodies, which leaves me frozen inside. At night I like to walk in the hostile city's unlit streets. Too afraid to die, I am content simply to flirt with death's shadow.

What is worse, to suffer in silence or to silence all sufferance? If I scream, will you come and scare my nightmares away? Dare to pity me, and I'll laugh in your face. All the lonely people belong nowhere, and that's the only answer there is.

Don't say a thing, I understand. Denial is the key to the core of your being. No thank you, I'm safe and happy in my little cell, you insist; the walls begin to melt so you lie down and bury your face in your hands; from a distance it looks almost as if you were making love to the floor; it could be the beginning of a new existence, only your tears are fake and the marble is barren.

Mercy, the old man can hardly remember the beginning. Show some compassion, young ones- do not ask for the end of the tale. Pure sunlight, would you not give up all your aspirations for a delicate uncontaminated beam? Whole continents are sinking in the oceans of expansion, humanity itself stinks of rotting ambitions and insatiable greed. Please, wait for me before you cut the cord, we can still make this death worth dying for.

Your hopes seek to fly, but you've learned to cut their wings before they're old enough to rebel; instead, you let them carry the weight of broken dreams and accumulated disappointments. Carve the same word on your palm every single night, then lick the wound. Blood may taste like iron, but at least it is warm, it is full of life, and it's yours to the last drop.

"You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements.

(...)

"The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, invention, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

(...)

"One day, when he reached saturation, I would tell him how he almost made us lose interest in passion by his obsession with the gestures empty of their emotions, and how we reviled him, because he almost caused us to take vows of chastity, because what he wanted us to exclude was our own aphrodisiac- poetry."

Anais Nin