As I grow older, my capacity for affection decreases, takes on a half-hearted
air--the galloping weariness of a Viennese waltz. I grow indifferent to
reciprocation; I do not expect. Love, more than an emotion or an exchange,
becomes an itch, a physical release. I have grown more mundane, less hopeful.
Perhaps even hope itself strikes me as absurd, adolescent, repetitive and
inexplicable as a yawn.