There are some nights that stretch into infinity, second after second that combine into millennia before the sky becomes bright again. He can't bear to watch the sunrise. He draws the curtains and faces the wall, pretending to sleep although he hasn't really in thirty years. Behind his closed eyes lie a bathroom soaked in red.

There are some nights that pass in a second. He almost drifts off, only to be woken by a presence next to him in the bed; a heartbeat and an intake of breath that fill the empty space. He never turns to face it, just stares at the ceiling, reveling in the fact that his tired mind can still conjure up the image of the only man he ever truly loved. He stays still until the night has passed, always too quickly. He can never have enough time with the imagined one next to him.

The worst nights are when he doesn't think of him at all, almost sleeps peacefully, is all right with the lack of a person on the other side of the bed. He can't bear it when he realizes what he's done, because he can't forget him. So he reads the letters. They've become soft, the edges dulled, the ink faded, but the passion behind the words remains. "I love you," say the letters, and he whispers it back. "So beautiful," say the letters, and he still has that hat, because as awful as it is to keep it, to throw it away would be so much worse. "I shot myself," say the letters, and he has to push them away before a tear falls on that messy, scrawled, perfect, handwriting.

He reads them over and over again, the happy and the sad, because they are all a part of him. He reads them over and over again so that he can remember. He reads them over and over again until the night he's killed, a death that parallels that of the love of his long, dim, life.

And he opens a door.