I have not been a desperate thing, a clawing, needful thing, in a lifetime, this most recent timeline. I cannot call it repletion, truly, because I’ve never known the word, but I imagine this is close: a negotiation between my appetites and my love. And still the depth of it, that desperation, has sunk like a shadow into me, a stain to drag my fingers down. Acknowledgment, reminiscence. Longing, distant as a star, and as hot. Enough to warm cool hands by, not enough to burn. Not anymore. But I remember.