Dear Nathan,

Today the computer lab is drenched in the smell of your cologne. It's stuck in the carpet and clinging to everyone's hair. I wonder if people like the smell or dislike it. I wonder if they consider it a nuisance or a nice enhancement. I am thinking in the language of my poem, the one I wrote about you, that I called Hawaii's Memory.

Permeating, saturating
The smell of intensity, gold and blue
I am filled with a tropical yearning
Oceans of coconut in your sea-born eyes
Perceiving, possessing, or possessed

In my hair, on my clothes
Stinks of April afternoons
Intoxicating and complicated
Heavy with impending stormclouds
Pouring saltwater tears, making lakes
On the sidewalk of your soul

The smell of Hawaii is so intricately connected to you. Hawaii was the start of my addiction. You were present beside me on the bus that night, when I was soaking wet from the rain and shivering from the air conditioning. I could see your reflection in the darkened windows, though you were an ocean away. You, born across the sea, found your way to my town, and when I first escaped you and put another sea between us, you followed me even then. You were destined to shadow me everywhere.

I've tried to shake you off. I've tried to strangle you. I've tried to break your little heart into so many pieces that you would fly back to where you came from and never, ever come back to me again. You still follow me.

Why don't you give up? If we had such a deep, emotional connection, why can't you realize that the connection is severed and leave me? Or maybe that's why you stay. Why do you addict yourself to pain?

And why insist on following me everywhere? Why insist on drenching the computer lab in your cologne? I don't want you back. I never will again. Why can't you just leave me alone?

The substance for your shadow

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