I wish I could make some claim to romance to justify this. I wish I could say that I was mute with desire, that the winter had silenced me and that my voice was drowned out by the wind, or that my lover cupped his hand over my mouth the whole time. But the truth is that this room isn't coated in carpet and I have forgotten how to speak and forgotten the necessity of words. I have faded in the mediocrity I despise. I crumble and submit to the things that I hate and avoid the things I love. I am defensive from myself, and the armour blocks me from ever feeling anything at all. I blot myself with alcohol and drugs to forget these things, and I wonder if I have progressed at all from two years ago.

There are the paintings and the sequenced images and the exterior words, but none of them seem to make up for my own loss of speech. I miss it, and feel something has been cut off from my body that keeps me from it, some necessary muscle or ligament. My thoughts are fleeting and my inspired notions missing, I have only my own shallow desires.