"I wanted to tell her, I truly did. I wanted to communicate all that I felt. That with the entirety of me, I wanted her. That the word love didn't quite encompass what I felt, that if it were to try to capture what I had, it would be swallowed, consumed whole along with its surroundings. I want to share with her my dreams, to take my heart and place it in her hands so she'd be assured that it had no other home."

Joe's words trailed off, his ramblings meant nothing to his calico companion who found her best course of action involved resting herself within close enough proximity of his head to groom his trademark shaggy top. Nothing could be done to soothe his soul, he wanted his lady and that was an impossibility as it stood.

It wasn't his fault.

He was associated only in name, or at least 98% so.

It wasn't his fault.

That didn't change the fact that he now resides in fiction