I tried to be as honest as I'd ever been. I tried to surpass all my previous honesty. I told her about the mistake, and the remorse, and the second mistake, and third, and the brief feeling of immunity to all guilt, the following eight rapid mistakes, and the ensuing tidal wave of true, actual remorse, deep and black and heavy, the tears, the picture frame I had punched through and the dog I bought to serve as a daily reminder that I was alive. And how the responsibility of feeding the dog every morning and every evening became a kind of therapy, and that it helped. I asked if she had ever needed this kind of therapy, and apologized for not even knowing her well enough to know what shame she had felt, or continued to feel. I apologized and described the numerous ways I had cried, referencing of Inuits and their many kinds of snow. I am sorry, I said. Sorry sorry sorry.

When the letter was finished I read it over a few times before Selecting All and Copying. Then I quit Word. When prompted, I responded that I did not want to save my changes. I stood from the computer and made my way upstairs, into the closet and into the attic.

The next day I sat down at the computer and opened my email. I addressed a message to the whore with a subject line that said, No it's not. I moved the cursor to the message body and hit Paste.

The text that appeared must have been written by my roommate, and was disturbing to say the least. He had written of raging infernos and biblical pestilence. He had wished upon the letter's recipient general poor health and general bad fortune, and, specifically, Chlamydia. He shared a recipe for some fruit-themed bread, and described a minor league hockey game featuring a fight he saw in the stands, two women fighting over a man wearing a t-shirt that read, Sex Instructor. My roommate asked why she would never fight over him, wasn't he worth the busted lip or whatever? Then there was a link to that video online of a white kitten embracing a black kitten. Three minutes later I was certain there was not a single thing wrong with the world, no cracks in foundations, no wear on the joints, not a single frayed thread.

And so what that we were writing to the same person? Obviously?

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