It is difficult, to come in after another man. You are fighting not just the man but an idea of him. A memory which perhaps meant everything. The depths of sorrow, love never to be recaptured but only yearned for.
Tricky, tricky.
But here I am, too. No less a phantom. I have been at this fourteen years. Half my life. I have nothing to show for it but a series of moments – hundreds certainly, and thousands almost as likely. Nothing permanent but what I remember… and what I’ve learned. There are a million things to say, a million gestures, and an eye which can observe the million things about her to uncover what might distinguish her from others. Romance mass-manufactured and then bespoke. There are ways to make her forget, and at one point I’ve tried them all.
Tricky, tricky.
But memory is a fickle thing. One random moment can come unbidden in full clarity after decades while another is sought and preserved and lost. One can overwrite bad with good, with enough time and care and attention. But to overwrite one good with another? And what manner of author? Am I a cuckoo, to kill a memory, an idea, and replace it with my own? Is nothing I ever have truly mine? Certainly nothing has stayed mine. Give up the ghost, then, and accept you cannot build nor steal for good… but could I survive alone?
Tricky, tricky.
Disassembly 