Tired of war stories.

Ten days and counting. T-minus ten. The same number as are on my hands and feet, but not together and I wonder if I will return with all ten on the respective appendages. Ten, by merit of being on these appendages is a perfect number, and yet one has to wonder if perhaps it is not too late fore there to me a change.

A monumental change, a systemic, paradigmatic shift, a revolution as some might want to say, and in a swirl of atoms bouncing back and forth, in the miracle of heat and molten metals something changes and maybe that perfect number will become nine. Nine: a pinky finger, or a missing index finger. Maybe five: a missing hand or foot, and suddenly only the workdays are important, and the weekends we can finally spend as we wish--the number seven no longer exists as a standard you know. Maybe it will be two, or even one.

But for now in this moment the perfect number is ten.

To Cristine, I will say: I envy you in Brooklyn in October.

A regret: I only ever crossed the Williamsburg bridge at night. Under the cover of darkness, I would liken and fantasize, like a thief or refugee under some great peril from agents of the Axis perhaps. Or to obscure a foul deed or escape the eyes of suspicious brethren, and to my love, in the dark. The truth is that I only crossed the bridge at night because of the convenience of doing so. They daytime, all seven repetitions per week, are too full of other things, usually doled out in eight to twelve hour intervals. And the truth behind the fantasy, Cristine, is the depth of the regret.

The regret comes from a photograph Daniel took in the daytime, in October's late afternoons that are late before you expect them, and the sun hurls herself against the tall horizon and shatters into a million slivers obscured only by the shapely frame of the bridge. And in that moment I am in love in the kind of way that makes the lie something not-so-bad.

My father said it was the thing he hated most: a lie. Under normal circumstances this is an important thing because fathers are generally supposed to mean something.

Ten days, and I am tired of reading war stories. I hope that you will know why when you read this my dear beloved friends, because you are the only people that will ever find this.

I fell in love with New York, and then very quickly learned to hide myself away in the glory of her movement, between the folds of cloth and wind it's easy. I'll hide myself here and be small and wait until something happens. Someone will come, surely or the time to hide will end--surely I will know when this is. We'll count the days, the number of steps retraced and then we will know, you and I. But until then, this is where I will obscure myself to the world, real or not; always with the hope that I am discovered.

I was born to lose this game of hide and seek and when I do take me into your arms and set me upon your shoulders: We will cross the bridge and watch the October sun commit suicide against the soft crevice between Manhattan and Jersey and I will come home.