...

The hollow notes of an echoey piano over my headphones. Specifically song number eight on a Liz Phair CD of unknown name, taking me back into my 19th year, in a low-lit room where a man would climb through my window in the cold of a Connecticut winter. I can again feel the chill of the dusky gray air, just before it snows. And I can recall the books stacked in angular piles along the floor, the anticipation of the evening, the emptiness of that time. And the man would come through the window onto the futon bed, just to say hello. But he is now long gone, dead of an undetermined overdose.