I’m terrified that my music will leave me. When I haven’t spent time with her in a while, I stare longingly across the room at the once bright lights of my synthesizer. “Will we feel the same way about each other next time?” Already I feel her distance. We’ve changed. I’ve changed. It was all a dream. A fling of passion brought on by good circumstances and idle hands.

As the time grows, I feel her disappointment. I feel her drawing away. And of course she does! I’ve been gone too long. I’ve finally overstayed my welcome. Or perhaps underplayed my hand, not taken the chance on a grand gesture that would reflect how important she is to me.

I text her in the morning. “I miss you.” Do the replies come later? I am ashamed when I see the evidence of our last lovemaking. Recordings strewn left and right in a flurry of passion. I remember the way you looked at me. Do you want to get tea?

I sit before her. Muse, techno goddess, altar to machine love and cable sex (has anyone ever accused you of being a cable addict?) I run my hand along her cables, slowly unplugging our last moment together. My heart is in my throat. We can’t go back to where we were before. There’s only forward. There are no reply, no returns to the favorite restaurant of our first date - I tore that one down too.

I bring her to life. It always seems too fast. So many lights blinking so quickly. A deep breath.

The sound starts. A tone. Its rich but also flat and single dimensional. I shift uncomfortably. I reach out to bring a part of myself into the movement. I see a smile. It’s inside me. We begin our conversation. Topics flow and are discarded. One sticks - a theme. We texture it together. Learning it’s edges, how you float around it, how you teach me!

Tears well. I’m sorry darling! It was me all along! You’ve been here, lonely and silent, waiting for me. I’ve been afraid of myself. Afraid that there won’t be more. That I’ve seen the last drops of my love while pouring it all out last time. Afraid that my demons will poison you. Will poison us. That my angst at our separation will make it impossible to understand each other, those 2am drunken arguments.

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder but darling my heart is so full I think I’ll perish with another moment away. But always I fear, it would be far greater pain for our love to sour than for it to exist only in my memory.

But you are real, I am real. I do my best to capture our moment, but it pales, a black and white snapshot of the ballroom where we dance together.