IT's only February and I'm already thinking of Eve. I guess it's appropriate. Her one year anniversary is coming up. A year ago, she was still alive, and probably more alive than most of us ever will be. She was unsuspecting. She had her whole life ahead of her. I only regret one thing: losing touch with a person like that, who did more in twenty-two short years than most people do in a full, long lifetime.

She was the first of four, but the rest weren't like this. There was always a cause, a reason: loss of intellect, leukemia, heart attack. But Eve died for nothing. There was no cause. No freedom to fight for, no ideology to save. Just...pointless violence because a teenager and a twenty-one-year-old were looking for money to blow and a thrill. So because of that, she got a shotgun bullet through her skull and four more pistol bullets throughout her body.

That's when I realized that I'd been wasting my time searching for the meaning of life. It really is 42. There is no meaning, except what you make of it, for yourself. In the end, we die alone just like we're born alone. The crowd surrounds us but we live our lives trapped behind our own eyes. All other perspectives are imagined.

I sang your song, Eve, probably twenty times yesterday. You're the bridge, you're the bridge, you're the bridge, and the point is to not be afraid. But I am afraid. I'm not a mystic. And I thought it was supposed to be me first, with the doctor's clock ticking so close now. Three-and-a-half years to go. I'll beat that, I'm sure now. As long as a tree doesn't fall on me, or I'm chosen for those mid-night games like you.

I'll dance like there's no tomorrow, Eve, like you did, because for all we know, there isn't. Everyone separates into factions: extremist this, zealot that, political left and right. The question is screamed out in the veins of all the people: "What do you want from us? What are we supposed to do? Sit back and take it?" So the bombs drop and the guilty and innocent, alike, are slaughtered. Nothing solves the problem.

Maybe you're lucky, Eve. You didn't get to witness this. The dead are the lucky ones. They don't have to deal with themselves, or the burden and the guilt the human race forever lays upon itself. No more searching for love or hate. Just eternal rest, eternal Oblivion. The cement must have been better than their eyes, when they left you lying there. No more fear. No more questions. Nothingness. For nothing.

As usual, I'm an empath, so the emotion wells up inside of me and I package it within myself because there's nowhere for it to go. I turn the music up really loud--I can't take it. Too much love turns sour after awhile when all it is is stagnant. Love turns sour, like rotten milk. If you open me up, that's what you'll find. Underneath, I'm still a little girl, poisoned by the whispers of Seraphim and impossible dreams.

I turn to small things, like calendars filled with Hopper's sunlight, and soapstone, ready for me to carve what God tells me is inside. I already know. It's myself. As cold and lonely and imprisoned as the stone with nowhere to go and no means of getting there.

But that's life.