Love #1: Between the ache and the indian burn.

The ache beats the way a tooth throbs. A hard thing hurting like a soft thing. Like a magical, bluesy toe-tapping beat it urges him on. It doesn’t make sense.

Neither does running through a Murakami forest, but he runs anyway. Mostly for love, but in the absence he pretends to chase unicorns. And untether magical conches, their deep moan coming from everywhere.

Everyone he knows tells him that there aren’t seashells in the sepia-toned forest, aren’t fish with flashlights, no stars. Just tangles and plops of green. Fear-flavored odors and shit.

If he were sitting with her in a room he’d tell her that the color brown is comprised of orange and black, and orange is full of light, and stars are light, and, so, there are stars in the forest. She’d look away; she’s in love with someone else.

He’d run through the forest collecting starfish, building cob firepits for wild olive and chloroplast pizza, recording bird chants and mating calls—if he knew it would make her love him. But she believes in time and waiting for him would be time wasted not-loving. He knows this.

The forest is warm now, smells of sulfur, of egg. He can feel it—the egginess— emerging from his pores like wild bullfrogs after a rain storm. This new feeling is different from the ache. It’s like the first slow, tightening Indian burn you got as a child. You thought you could take it, but it got way too hot, way too fast.

She’s gone for now. The forest burns invisibly. It’s just a clearing—not even an open field—with nothing beyond. The color of the ink sack of the cuttlefish without the idea of the cuttlefish. He can remember running, can remember grasping at imaginary, fascinating ideas of things out-of-context. The ideas of the feelings are still there, the compulsion gone.

He remembers a mountain in the middle of the night. A full moon illuminating the route between LA and the Valley of the Sun. The space between the cushions of the couch. The feeling of being there before. The beer. The wine. Falling out of the shower, off the bed, down the steps. The feeling of tottering imperfection. True matters of consequence.