We once sat on these concrete steps outside a used record store, while our fair boy hunted down some elusive version of his vinyl obsession. We waited for him outside and we smoked cigarette after cigarette, starting a new one each time the old one died out. And when I felt the wind slide up my dress, suddenly remembering that my undergarments were not on me, but, instead, folded tightly in my purse, I confessed it all to you. I told you about "last night". And without hesitating, almost like you didn't hear me, you began your own confession. So different but so similar. I was starting out on a new adventure and you were ending yours, in a way. And both of us held a part of each other in secrecy and silence, and I melded with you then.

And I want to give you trinkets. I want to give you pretty things, meaningful things. I understand, have always understood, what they mean, and I want to give them to you. I want to woo you. I want you to swoon when you think of me, an ocean away, your sinister sister.

(My lover gives me trinkets, lavishes me with tokens of affection and promises of eternity, and I swoon with each declaration. He makes me swell with heady romance, forest moss and moonlit moors, Bronte style.)

And you, my Gorey-girl, I want to send a piece of me back with you. I've never been whole anyway. But I would cut deep into that wholeness (if it existed) just so you would never forget me, as I will never forget you.