Learning to love all over again and from the beginning is like going to Coney Island at night to ride the Cyclops roller coaster. It is changing your mind at the last minute and letting your friends get on it without you. It is watching their smiling faces disappear into the night the higher up they travel as you stay safely on the ground waving at them. It is realizing that you are not ready for it. It is buying a tacky post card at a hot dog stand instead. The postcard says "I rode the Cyclops at Coney Island." It is keeping that postcard with you just in case you ever have to tell somebody that in fact, there was a time when you did ride the Cyclops and that you have evidence. That you would rather stand and wave tonight, but that there was that time.

Learning to love again is like making a list with your best friend. The list includes old lovers who used sentences such as "your eyes are like pools of water" in their letters to you. It is realizing that this is the common denominator in most bad relationships: That they never even cared to look at your eyes long enough to figure out that in fact, the color of your eyes is not the color of a pool with water. Realizing that it must have been dark, or that something must have gone completely wrong, and that this is also a common denominator of failed relationships. that it must have been too dark. that something must have gone wrong.