Yes, we are strangers. Two years have passed, and I feel that nothing has changed. Yet it is not so, for the Universe is expanding, and we have been growing steadily apart. Even since the Dawn of Time, when we were toegether for an instant. An explosion of feeling has now set us on this course.

Like galaxies we drift along, immense yet isolated, till someday when there will be nothing but light-years in between.

Some nights, I go to sleep thinking of the compromises I have made that day. Moments of weakness: of fear and of laziness. I burn in a kind of shame. Out of the ashes comes a resolute Man with his eye on a Future. In the morning the ashes have cooled. The rules and cares drilled into him strip him of his will, his guts. The bright lights and moving images distract his vision from the horizon.

I go to bed, just another man.

Each time the fire burns, the flames grow dimmer. Some nights, the Man does not come, but I merely stare at the embers, wondering if they'll survive another day.