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All I could do was sway under the fluorescent light, struck
dumb by unforeseen tragedy. How long had you planned
to leave me? Why were you so afraid to tell me?

Empty questions I already knew the answers to.

The night you left I wandered, dead-eyed and restless,
out into the garage. That night it wasn't a warehouse, a
studio, a workspace or a workshop. It was only a garage. I
took the piece I had been working on and tore it to
shreds. I ruined it with no regret, deliberately throwing
every piece around the room, till the walls were colored
and the floor covered in chunks. Then, for the first time
in my life, I went to bed and left the cleaning for the
morning. Yet despite not sharing the bed with you,
despite the seeming improbability of another event ever
occurring after the tragedy of you leaving, the morning
still came, and I still cleaned.

It's odd, after all the people I've scared with my work,
I think for the first time I'm starting to scare myself. I
don't feel sadness without you, but I feel a hollow, empty
feeling that makes me think the hollow, empty feeling
that inspired me to work in the first place was nothing
but some kind of misdiagnosed allergy, a common cold
compared to the influenza of ambition that took me now.
It's been three months since you left, and things are more
or less as they were before you came. My work no longer
looks good, but I still put most of it out for public
consumption.

You know how the public consumes work like mine.

I guess I'm somewhat locally famous now. It's not as
though I get recognized. I suppose that's a good thing; if
someone ever did recognize me I don't think I'd ever go
out again.

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