He was so devoted to me. You would think I liked it but instead, it’s like it made me angry. He was unfazed by the largeness of my personality, the wildness of my emotions. I talked incessantly and he listened. He adored everything I did, even the annoying or gross stuff. He was steady. I could count on him. It drove me mad. I found myself breaking up with him just to watch his expression change, just to feel something. It devastated him. I creeped myself out how I couldn’t feel anything. It’s like he was in a jar, under glass. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. I couldn’t touch him. It was like I could press pause or mute and he would just be stuck there, quiet and helpless.

I saw him, but not clearly, not at first. First, I saw an aura, a swollen, angry aura. I hadn’t seen an aura so clearly in a while. The young man, as I said, was stooped over slightly, and so, spurting spontaneously from his back, energetically, were these small fires, like volcanic eruptions. They were violent swirls of orange and yellow light, but they subsided quickly and smoldered, choked out without steady fuel. Then all around him were hazy layers of smoke, grays and browns, wafting, swirling. I could feel him locked in an obsessive thought loop of shame and disgust, anger and despair. Occasionally, it would add a sputter of fire to the aura, and his penitent trance didn’t allow any of the smoke to clear. I just watched it thicken around him as though he were in a glass oven. He sat transfixed in the chair, hands palm up in his lap, weakly clasping an imaginary object, his eyes locked onto an unforgiving abyss. I saw in his mind’s eye, a heavy pistol, a handgun.