BUT WHY DO I love her so? But why do I love her so? But why did I love Dulcinea? The question wrapped around the experience, like paper on a bottle. The more you turned it, the more you saw. Then everything went all zig-zag again and I wasn’t quite sure where I was, only that one piece connected to another — and there was a little boy there — one minor plot twist turned things. The next thing I knew we were landing at Kabul Airport in sandy Afghanistan.

Why were we here? Don’t tell me our band was on tour. But didn’t you know, our new keyboard player had let down all her previous bands? There was a large metallic overhang, like the roof of the stage over the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. Everything else was underwater. Warm, chlorinated, waterpark kind of blue water. We lugged our suitcases through it, or rather they floated. Floating by went spinning islands of American candies, leftovers from the retreat? Mars, Snickers, Twix, Pringles, take your pick. And what were we even doing here? I grabbed a chocolate from one of the airport waterpark islands and looked up, saw orange. Great glowing comet-like streaks were running the length of the sky. Was it a fireworks display or had the Iran War spread to Afghanistan? But weren’t the Pakistanis also fighting the Afghanis now?

When I got to the hotel, I decided that I had my fill of adventure. I went to the café bar, told them to make me the blackest, darkest, evilest espresso there was. If she was the light, then I would be the dark. If she was wholesome and good, I would bristle with sinister malevolence. This life without her had been a graveyard dead end. Light unto light, dark unto dark, her pure into my pure. I stared down into the cup and it whispered back up to me like a haunted well.