In the same motion as she dismounted him she lit her match along her Draughtman’s Contract poster. She sat on the the bed’s rounded corner. She scratched behind her ear, disrupting the smoke trail. You know it isn’t really a question of whether nick drake would still be good if he hadn’t killed himself, he was never not going to kill himself, and no im not talking about that elementary time is a linear path shit, i mean there’s some shit that just is, you see this man and you read his words and hear his voice and there is nothing else there for him, he had three albums and in fiction theres the rule of threes, if you subscribe to the walmart subscription of the infinite universe belief there is not one where he survives. Maybe he makes it to 27, maybe he dies right after the last note of from the morning, but he never records another song and he always takes those pills, or maybe he hangs himself in the garden shed or drives off a cliff, no he wouldn’t drive off a cliff, the garden shed seems fitting come to think of it, you know how theres canonized films and canonized fiction, you know as in the Great American Novels or the top albums chosen by the top editors at Rolling Stone or the aggregated scores done by the droves of film critics whose personal connections at vulnerable points in their lives intersect like venn diagrams on a cork board with pictures from zapruder, I think that must be the canonized universe, nick drake dying among vines and dirt and crows and trowels, the world itself, this word alone canonizing this, drake, of course you only call him drake or nick drake because he must always sound as if a mythical beast, doesn’t die of pills, lou reed from pills slash dies from pills keith richards dies from pills, people harder than drake, with drake you hear the twine in the rope twisting as he sways slowly back and forth from a breeze, its not wind that sways him its only the breeze. Its all footnotes in a diary though, i don’t think nick drake existed at all, not even in a romantic way of saying its just you see this man, no boy, boys more fitting and if you look at his picture and listen to his music you know why, you dont see him having a laugh with friends you dont see him vomiting from food poisoning you dont see him scraping his knee falling off a bike, you cant see these things, you cant even really see him playing these songs, hes just a voice in a record and maybe thats all he ever was. Would you listen to me if your semen wasnt seeping into my bedsheet. … Was that a loaded question? Just trying to come up with a loaded answer.