Sometimes the loneliness is like a stone.  And I want to break open from the ache of it.  And I want some dark energy to pull me up by my hair, bend me over the edge of some hard surface.  Pull my nipples until I cry out.  Tie me down and hit me with the flat of their hand.  Hard and merciless.  With a snarled lip and arms taut.  Fingers deep and cruel in my flesh.  Until the heat burns the loneliness away.  Until all I can feel is what’s happening in this single, growling moment.  The searing, cleaning burn of rage.  One long moment of enduring.  Enduring something visceral, something vicious and unthinking.  The rushing weep of endorphins.  Until I’m so far out of my head I forget who I am.  I forget who you are.  I forget what wakes me up at night.  And the sweet forgetting opens me like a flower.

—Fever