Stephen Mejias

It was November 1999, in New Orleans. I had been on the road for almost a month, traveling on my own aboard Amtrak trains. I had a rail pass that allowed me to get on and off wherever I pleased. That freedom was great, but I became terribly lonely. Part of the deal was I had to make at least two stops in Canada. So, I went from New York City to Rochester to Niagara Falls and then up to Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, and Toronto. All the while reading crazy shit like Pauline Reage's Story of O or Henry Miller's Quiet Days in Clichy, meeting beautiful people, falling in love with perfect strangers a hundred times a day, discovering wonderful new places and then leaving almost as soon as some hint of a connection was made.

She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and wore a brown bomber and a blue and green checked ivy cap. Every ten minutes, we'd have to stop so she could take a picture of something.

She wrote your name down in my notebook and circled it and drew a bunch of funny pictures of cats.

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My heart is not broken. It is collapsed like the sun into the frozen Meadowlands. Sometimes, alone in bed at night, I get this awful, screaming pain in the side of my bony chest, in that empty space where I imagine you to be. It's not often that I do this, sit here. Listen to the same sad songs over and over again, sing along, cry, think of how these words were written for us. It's probably not a good habit to be getting into, but it seems I just can't stop. It's been more than two weeks now, and it isn't wearing off. Twelve songs, 40 minutes, over and over again. I can't stop. Remember when you said that no one else could ever love me like you loved me? I don't know if that was a gift or a curse, but I believe it is true.