Another nightmare. This time we were setting up a Christmas tree and afterwards I held her but she kept squirming to break away and kept looking elsewhere, and then in one abrupt move she was gone, the tree was smashed and distorted, bent like the aftermath of a hurricane, and she was nowhere to be found.

Could it be that even at this very moment, someone is praying for me who will someday join forces and do life with me?

She might as well have looked me straight in the eyes and said word for word, “This is how little I care about you” before she left me in that cold Albany parking lot on that gray evening in March and got into her car and drove forever out of my life. But she didn’t. She let me wait for her for a month before vaguely telling me over the phone that she was out, done, giving up on me for no apparent reason, and only after my emotionally confused state desperately yanked the truth out of her. I remember so clearly her saying at one point, “It shouldn’t be…