And now that my reflections are over, how better for a writer to end a year than with a story? This is, in a way, a sequel to Polychromatic Frowns; it can be called such, at any rate, because it is of the same style. And so here it is, the last words I shall pen in 2012:

I lost the only girl I ever truly cared about today.

I gave her everything. I gave her all the time I could spare and all the help I could offer and all the love I could give. But it wasn't enough for her. I don't know what would have been and I don't know what more I could have done. She told me she was breaking up with me and I guess that's what she did.

But just look on the bright side of it all. Sure, I'll be upset for a while, but tears don't take up nearly as much time as phone calls at all hours to talk about so many things that by the time we were done I would have no idea what I was doing before she called, or than long walks that ache my legs and make my hand stiff from holding hers so long.

Sure, I'll never forget her, but memories don't cost as much as expensive dinners where the lights are so low you can hardly see your food without spilling spaghetti sauce down your front which of course doesn't matter because nobody can so you anyway; or gifts for birthdays or Christmases because even though it's superficial and mercenary commercial corruption makes it incumbent, which is so much as to say its absolutely necessary and can't be avoided, which doesn't matter because everyone does it.

I'm sure the pain--which feels like the anesthesia wore off in the middle of an operation and I woke up to find a surgeon with rough, cold hands and some very sharp, but very shiny and pretty in a way, object poking around my heart--will go away. And then I'll never be hurt again. At least not as much. I might fall down a staircase as I sometimes do or cut my finger while chopping vegetables or hit my thumb with a hammer, or I might even go skydiving and find my parachute was replaced with an anvil or I might get run over by a car whose driver is too busy texting to notice or I might get shot, but none of that hurts as much as this does, nor even does a paper cut.

And I guess I'll be spared of the jealousy I might someday have felt toward her because of her general perfection in every way from kindness to wisdom to shrewdness to effervescence to temerity to veracity to liberality to patience to optimism to humility and back to kindness and all over again two or three times.

And I'll never feel that sensation like there are a thousand monarch butterflies migrating south from my heart into my stomach again. At least not for her face, which was altogether too pretty, anyway. After all, she beauty was so peerless in all respects that staring at her would eventually have caused me to go blind, anyway, and I'm much better off seeing, I think.

And besides that, being with her made me so happy that eventually I would probably just burst with the joy, and that would be very messy and very unpleasant for us both and would have left her very sad and lonely in the end.

When you think about it, love is really a very impractical and very inconvenient thing and it should be far preferable to be all alone with nobody else to interfere between me myself and I. I'll be able to talk to myself all I want, because I do rather enjoy hearing myself talk. She always used to, too, but obviously she got tired of it, which I can't understand at all. But that's just another reason I'm better off now.

So you see, it really doesn't matter than she stabbed me in the heart--metaphorically speaking, of course, because if she had really stabbed me in the heart I would be dead and she would be in prison, or else lying to police detectives who she could probably outwit anyway. It really doesn't matter, as I was saying, that she turned what I expected to be a lovely evening into the most unpleasant and anguishing time I have ever spent, even the night I spent in the hospital because I had mistaken a bear trap for a hula-hoop or the time I had gotten into an elevator so hurriedly I had only one sleeve on and forgot to pull the other through the doors before they closed.

So you see, it really doesn't matter that she told me she thought we should see other people. She was probably right, because like I said before if we had stayed together I probably would have lost my vision with which to see anyone else or anything at all, which are mostly things I do like to see. It doesn't matter that she turned and walked away from me for what will probably turn out to be the last time. It's all for the better that I smiled and waved as she left, and called after her,

"At least I won't ever have to look at your beautiful face again, which was far too distracting, or listen to your dulcet voice, which in its inimitability took all the fun out of hearing ocean waves or singing birds. And at least I won't go blind or burst with happiness!"

Sincerely, Nuile: Lunatic Wordsmith