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This thing that we have now isn’t so bad, is it? In fact, it’s pretty close to what I’d consider ideal. We talk for hours through wires and satellites, through plastic buttons and glass screens, not minding that we both have to get up early the following day to do jobs we both feel no love for. We go through days like a pair of words meant to be printed side by side on a page, but written, instead, on the first and the last pages of a book.

We talk about days in places we call home, places we’d rather not be, because our place is in the woods, far from the pressures and the expectations of people we'd rather not please but need to, far from the lives we are leading but rather leave, because we have other things in mind, like a life where we roam the streets of Paris, or one where we have yakiniku together after watching the swans in the river.

But these are merely fabrications of my imagination, things that crept their way into our conversations. These are things that may be happening in a parallel universe where we appear as a portmanteau scribbled on a piece of paper, where you are a person, not a mere voice uttering sentences that, in the end, don’t mean anything.

Because what could this mean, this thing that we have now? What could this be, other than a game we play for hours, rolling dice and counting squares? Every game has its end, no matter how long it is played and I can only hope this ends in a draw. In some games, they say, you win or you die. In this game, I say, you win or you cry, which is a kind of dying, really.

But I maintain that this is close to ideal, because it has no strings (unless I choose to believe in the fabled red string), no walls, and best of all, no name, which makes it nothing and everything I want right now. So yes, it's not bad at all, whatever this thing is. Its impermanence and its inconsistence may just be what you and I need in this reality where youandi does not exist.