eMorning.

Notice the cleverly disguised title. Not bad hor.

It's slightly past four in the morning, and I've just got back from work. I am strangely unaffected, and hardly sleepy. It's hard to believe there was a time I felt it important to /wrists about how I caught the last bus back from work. Hard to believe there was a time when buses were important. Indeed, when anything was important. Because last night, I heard what will probably be the three most memorable lines in my life.

The difficulty is in quantifying them now. Most things about her are. Memorable, that is, although one could argue that most things about her Are. Fun, what caps can do.

As with everything that all of a sudden defines your mind, it started quite innocuously. "You drink too much. If I ripped out your liver and threw it at someone, it would probably kill him." There are ways to drive a point across. Logic, humour, force and zeal, I've always thought. Roughly in that order of effectiveness. I then discovered that astonishment also works quite well.

In what seemed too little time, I then find that there are words that can deliver the same amount of panic as, say, "I think I'm pregnant." They are, "I need to pee, but I'm not sure if I can make it to the toilet." Well, what would you say to that.

The walk back was unusually pensive. I ask. And sense, like how you sense that the oversized birthday cake your mates present you with is less likely to contain a stripper than the hobo downstairs wearing nothing but his lack of sobriety, that the answer isn't going to be pleasant.

She answers. And the lights in the world flicker. Silence, perfunctorily punctuated by pleasantry. Lit golden, eyes bright with streetlight and with a curious breeze tucking her hair to the left, she says, quite earnestly:

"I tried to tell you."

"Oh? When?"

"One of those times when I looked like I was about to say something, but didn't."

I compute, comprehend, and concur: "What?"

Shortly afterwards, I think a truck hit me. And it was awesome. In the original sense of the word.

Given that I write with vague intent to read this when I'm seventy and say hello to the garden gnomes every morning, I think I would hate me. "eMorning. What a nice, descriptive heading, asshole. What am I supposed to remember from this? That I'm a deliberately obscure piece of shit? And what's all this, then? Thanks, me. That truck should have killed you. Asshole."

Pretty near did. And me being me, other unfortunate fallouts follow.

You know how you read about, and see people who break down for the most silly reasons? "That song...it was our song. I just...can't...URHURHURHUR." "That fried chicken...it was what we ordered when we first went out. URHURHURHUR."

Yeah. Streetlights remind me of her, now. And beer. And cigarettes, because when I thought I really needed one, she reminded me why I didn't.

I think I'm fucked.