Gray naked trees that flake and tilt downward. Colorless pink leaves that desperately hang on. The ground is a dark brown mush, that sinks to every pressure. It reminds me of a monotone instagram filter. It is beautiful, you say, and I nod – perhaps fascination with the dying is human nature.

We share pieces of our minds- a fragment of my medulla oblogata, but not the cerebrum yet. Some shards of the hippocampus, which only remembers vague outlines and painted faces. You give a generous chunk of amygdala, the medial cortex, some anterior pituitary gland.

As they plop into my hand, I am astounded by the weight and texture, holding them unsteadily. The cortex folds are familiar: I see axon linkages, neuronal crossings akin to my own. Yet so foreign. They ooze in my hand, and I yearn to drop them. Blood leaks between my fingers and I imagine stamping my thumbprint with your blood on the dead tree trunk. Sign it with: the day two soulmates met. And then continue living with your comfortable presence hidden inside my cerebellum.

Cerebral friendships. Existing high and safe from the trenches of what is below. The closeness of clumsy mortal limbs-  knobby, soft, breakable. A hand along the back, and my body wants to run. Physical proximity makes me more uncomfortable than the idea of you reading the inner abstractions of this chaotic mind.

But I stay smiling, wanting of color.