The clock tower says it's 7:22 am now.

7:23.

7:24.

I'm watching it from my bedroom window—and thinking of you. You left the room an hour ago, and your absence lingers on:

7:26.

I have four more minutes to relish in your having-been-here—in its smell, shape, and sound—and then I will have to get up and destroy it. Make the bed, wash my hair, slide into my worn out silky dress, put on make-up. Perhaps your absence is a mere lack of imagination on my part: if only I had a more vivid imagination! But all I see in front of me is an ever-growing string of numbers.

7:29 now—but time has no meaning for you. Time loses meaning when it encounters paper. You do not know the hours of my anguish. I write to you now—and now you receive my letter. Yes, I receive your letter, and write back. I agree: time means nothing, but only as long as you and I share the same piece of paper. If I don't start a new page, we can fit ten days (your letter is postmarked ten days ago) in the space between your period and my capital letter. This imaginary closeness comforts, but no amount of imagination saves me from missing you every single moment of these days. My old hometown might as well be the moon, and I envy you that comfortable gray dress. I am wearing layers upon layers of clothing: from woolen pantyhose to an old fur coat, but none of it seems to help against the cold. And worse than the cold is the darkness, the heavy endless emptiness that weighs me down more than all the clothes put together. I grew up here, I keep reminding myself, I am used to it . . . but it's hopeless. It's hard to move, to breathe: this icy foreign air is hurting my lungs. The words that I exchange with my parents and friends are empty of any meaning because I cannot talk about you. What am I doing here? What are you doing there? You left me—you left me to go home. There's a part of me—a large one—that rejoices in your disappointment. I am tempted to repeat again and again: your home is here, by my side, in this room, where your absence grows more tangible with every new day marked by the ever present clock through the window: twenty-four days today, twenty-five tomorrow. But if I say that, in the same breath I should also question my decision to stay behind. The strength of my desire to be with you crashes against my fear of leaving the familiar: and the bright little room becomes a cell, and the picturesque clock tower—my custodian. And I'm willing to consider any means of forcing you to share my imprisonment, of keeping you by my side! If you speak of a prison, then I'm there right alongside you, in a cell of my own fear, guarded by my loyalty to the people who would not be able to accept the truth. My prison is much colder too. The cold has seeped into my bones (despite the heap of clothes), and I have trouble controlling my movements, my words, my desires. My failure to speak out flares up as anger, and I end up shouting at anybody who happens to be close by. I cannot recognize my friends anymore, and all I have left is my imagination. Last night, I tried to escape the darkness under the bundle of blankets, and today I woke up to the sound of your laughter. As we lay in bed trying to understand what happened, the tower clock rang eight times. On our way to work, we got the mail. There was one letter, unfinished. We filled in the missing lines while waiting for the bus: I dreamed it up, and you wrote it down. Because if you can just imagine that such an ending is possible, it will undoubtedly come to be.