Fragment: 3 AM

         I go dead the moment my hands touch the keyboard; autoimmune response, first line of defense against unwanted things and unwelcome thoughts. Yet in my head, behind no more than a flap of skin, it sits. We all must, in our own ways, crave the same thing. Community. I pretend I see it in the faces of people I pass, and they look away, ashamed to have been caught staring. Maybe it is something on my face that unsettles them, that look--hungry, haunted, hunting.