A Valentine.

I say, close your eyes and think about all the pain you have ever felt in your life. I don't mean papercut pain or tongue burn pain, but the kind of pain that has a color, and sometimes, its own dimensons, huge and growing dimensions like a new room opening inside your body, a void unfolding like reverse origami.

I'll give you an example, I say.

Once, I had my wisdom teeth removed, and the doctor didn't use any anethesia. Their was novicaine, but the stab in my gums hurt more than the ensuing numbness numbed anything, and when he cut into me all my bones shifted like fast-motion plate tectonics and I knew that was my body's sign language for pain. It was a pain that made my vision shake, it smelled like walking out into an incredibly white and empty day.

Are you listening? Because I have more. Like this other time, I went to Spain. I mean, I moved to Spain, for no ostensible reason--I slept in a low-ceilinged room on a mattress that was all steel coils and every day, I rode the metro around in circles and waited for rush hour when all the strangers would be packed together into the car and forced to touch me. I spoke the language, but no one spoke to me, and after a while not using my mouth I became convinced that I didn't have one anymore, that I was only transparent skin with nerves pulsing light and a swimming, bloodless brain. I was silent, but that pain had a sound. It seared across my skin and vibrated hard, the way I imagine a bomb has to sound before it turns you into light.

Keep your eyes closed. Not just them, close your skin up too, close your ears and be an echoing chamber, just for a minute, for me. Can you imagine what it is like, for me? Can you imagine the sound, the shake, what it tastes like to lose you?