Of course that's what you would say. I don't believe it, you know. [ kaveh says, more fond than anything. heartbroken and fond. he takes the kisses. he gathers them up like stars. he makes a constellation of them. kaveh presses it back, into the hollow midnight's neck, a mirror to where midnight once bit him. just once. ]

I know the man who carried that letter with him; I know the man who still thinks of that young man back at the host club. I know the man who sleeps and eats and rests so little that he burns himself for it. You know the parts of me that matter; I know these pieces of you. The parts that matter. The past matters. We have grown into the shapes that carry forward with us our mistakes. Those mistakes have always mattered.

[ ... ] Well, you've asked. This is it. The guilt and the deflection both.