text: "Is there any meaning to this?" she asks, turning over the last page of my book. "Well that depends." I respond, pouring myself another drink, "Do you think it's good enough to have any meaning?" I set my drink down at the table, it's my fifth tonight, she's still half way through her second glass, I sit down and take a sip. "I think giving it meaning is what makes it good." she puts the book down, I saw her glance at my drink, I wonder if she's concerned. "Are you saying it would be good if it had meaning, or do you think that the meaning that it has is what makes it good?" I pull the book towards me, it's not large but the older leather cover gives it some weight, the lamp on the corner of the table highlights all the wrinkles and creases inside the cover and I'm reminded just how long I've had this book, how long it took me to write anything. She takes a small sip from her glass and lights another cigarette, that's her fifth tonight, I quit almost a year ago but I don't mind, the smell of years of cigarette smoke has already stained the walls of my apartment. "I'm saying that when something has meaning put into, it doesn’t really matter how good it is objectively, it means that whatever it is has care, time and some soul put into it" She takes a draw and blows the smoke out the window, the cold air outside carries the smoke high and away, floating with snow. "But does that mean that it does have meaning?" I pick up the book trying to remember everything I wrote as I adjust in my chair, it creaks in pain, it's old and unstable, ready to give put at any moment. I think I cared about what I wrote, and it definitely took some time, does that mean that part of my soul is in there? "Yeah, I guess it does." I put the book back down and take another sip, a snow flake flies I through the window and lands in my drink, I think about whether or not if flew through her smoke before coming here, and is now melting into my drink. I glance up at her and she's staring at my drinking, smiling at the snowflake that just landed in it. "So what's the meaning then?" She takes another draw and ashes out the window, it flies away with her smoke. "I don’t know really know." I take another sip, it's getting difficult to have straight thoughts but I think that's when they become more honest. "Time maybe, inevitability, putting off the inevitable, hiding from it, wasting so much time hiding from the inevitable that you forget that it's inevitable and that you should have been preparing for it instead" I look up from my glass and she's smiling at me now. "There you go, there's that scary existentialism I knew was in there.