different

I didn't mean for things to turn out this way. I used to be so sure, you know? Everything was going to be all right in the end. I had it all worked out. There was a future. I know nothing's ever perfect but this is as close as it gets. Or was. I don't know what the right tense is for that. How do you talk about a future that's long since past? Or I guess more accurately, a future that never was?

Listen, I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything. I can't say it enough times. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I'd do everything different if I could. I would go back and mean every word, every single fucking word, if it would mean things didn't have to end like this. There's so many better endings, even if it had to end. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it.

I'm trying to choose the right words. It's hard. They never seem like enough. I scripted this whole thing out and I just can't say it anymore. I mean, what's the point? It's over. It's over and you picked a way to make it about as final as it fucking gets. Fuck you. You know I never meant to hurt you. I never meant any of it. You know as long as there was you and me I was happy, and why did you have to go and get rid of the one thing that meant anything to me? Where was I when you made your fucking plans?

I know I've made lots of mistakes. I'm not perfect. Nobody is. I did my best. We all do our best. I did everything I could, and I guess that wasn't enough for you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't do better. I'm sorry it didn't turn out different.

I'm sorry I wasted my fucking time.

photography lessons

I haven't really met anyone since I moved to Seattle, which isn't surprising. I tell people who ask that I've just been settling in. I'm not even sure what that really means. It's not like I have a lot of stuff. Everything is unpacked and I spend the evenings walking around Wallingford--did I get that right? I'm still getting used to the neighborhoods--or watching people from my window. It's a nice studio.

It didn't take me too long to find work. I guess I've met some people there but it's still a working relationship if you'll pardon the pun. None of them really know me. I think more important, none of them know anybody who knows me. I've got a chance to start over. I can reinvent myself. I'm going to start with photographs.

I'm not very good at changing my behavior. It's something you can only do a few times, I think. I did it a few times, when I was younger. Maybe that's just because it was the only way I could hide back then. Something happened and I'd change so that it would stop, or I'd change to get away from it, or something. It seemed so easy at the time. It was hardly even a conscious choice. It went something like--you know the saying "I became what I always hated?" Is that even a saying, or just a song?

Nobody takes pictures of me. Maybe I'm not photogenic but I think it's just the people I hang out with. But there's a few out there. It's hard to get a picture of who I am from them, if you'll pardon the pun. But that's how you get to know people now. You go to Facebook. You look at photos. You piece it together. You figure out what type of person they are. And then that's just what you think of them. Once you've figured out what kind of person someone is it doesn't matter what they do or act like. That's just who they are.

That's what love at first sight is all about, of course. You see someone and you fall in love and then there's nothing they can do to change that, until something happens that forces you to see.

So I've been carefully going through and finding photos that make me look like the kind of person people here will like. Adding this photo, deleting that one. Captioning them in just such a way. I'm building a new identity here. I get to start over without starting over. I feel sort of like I'm cheating, because not everyone gets this chance. But everyone deserves it.

destabilized

For most of my life I've been stable, exactly like a gyroscope is stable. I'm sure a physicist or someone could say something more about that. When I was a kid I thought gyroscopes spun on forever, like some sort of perpetual motion machine before I'd ever heard the phrase. There was something magical about them. I know better now. Things have not been so stable lately, but I've always come back to equilibrium.

Recently there's been a girl I've been thinking about all the time, and of course I've also been thinking about thinking about her. What I like about her is that she seems like she is always enthusiastic but always restrained. I met her this evening for coffee and bad diner food, which is really my favorite place to be, especially when things are mixed up. At first I was mostly quiet, subdued, taking it all in: the way she doesn't stir in the creamer and just watches the spirals make little patterns. The way she always has that little smile, almost like she doesn't know it's there.

We talked, as I'm so fond of saying, about everything and nothing--about fear and stability. About returning to equilibrium. About freedom. Maybe it was the coffee or the time of day but I've known for a while now that I can't keep spinning forever and suddenly it seemed like I didn't want to.

"There is nothing quite so frightening as freedom," I said aloud. She smiled and took my hand.

And then it was later, and my bags were packed, because a man has to face his fears.

fear

Fear is a survival mechanism. It triggers your adrenaline so you can fight or flee from whatever it is that's making you afraid--that's what they say, right? That's what all the textbooks say? And it makes sense, too.

I spent most of today in a good mood. It's not that anything in particular was happening but I was having fun with everything, and that's more than you can say for a lot of days. I smiled, joked, laughed. I liked everything. It was mostly solid. A few things that normally would have pissed me off happened and I just took it in stride. Like you do.

I was supposed to meet a friend somewhere in the Back Bay and it was raining and I don't really know the neighborhood very well still. It's always been the sort of thing I'm afraid of, getting lost or stranded or whatever after the trip. I called her when I got in the area and she wasn't answering. And I stood there at the streetcar stop, and wished I'd brought a hat, and tried to find a shelter.

Fight or flight, right? She isn't coming. I'm lost now. I'm frightened. I'm shaking with all the unnecessary adrenaline. You can't fight being lost, and there's nothing to run away from. There's not even weird looks from the passengers. I'm just another guy waiting for something that's not happening.

or flight

It was a stupid fight. I knew it when I started it. We both did. But I was drunk and there was something about the way he said it--everything he said was so patronizing. Like because I'm a girl and had a few drinks he needed to protect me. Maybe he was right. All I know is the last thing I wanted was to be anywhere near him.

It had been raining real hard for the past few days and it wasn't about to let up. I'd got us kicked out of the bar when I punched him in the eye, and we were waiting in the not-so-sheltered bus stop. I don't even remember what he said. I can perfectly see his face and expression and hear his inflections--that little smug "if you're fine then why'd you get us kicked out of the bar" smirk, all innocent and concerned--and eventually I just said "fuck you" and started walking away.

"Don't be like that, Melissa," he said. "Come back."

"Fuck you."

"I'm sorry. Really. Please don't go." He was following me now. I picked up my pace. He started to jog. "Melissa!"

I ran. I didn't care where I was going. I started at a sprint and didn't look back until I was blocks away and I didn't hear him calling after me, and then I kept running anyway. The rain soaked me to the bone I had no intention of stopping. I tripped a few times. I was too drunk to be doing this, and it was wet and dark. Sometimes I slipped, sometimes I tripped on the curb or something on the sidewalk. I was wet and bruised and bleeding. And I kept running.

Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that I had no idea where I was, that these buildings weren't familiar. If I was sober maybe I'd have stopped. But maybe not. I was drunk off my ass and running and bleeding and bruised and my jeans were torn and my lungs were burning and my muscles were sore and I was definitely alive. It was the best I'd felt since I don't even know when.

I mis-judged the curb and landed in a giant puddle, and the rush faded. I dragged myself onto the sidewalk and sat there curled up in the rain, cold and exhausted and frightened and confused. I didn't know where I was. I lay there for what seemed like hours but was probably more like fifteen minutes before I stood up. The heat had left my body, and now I was cold and numb and sore. I limped down the street in a direction that felt right until I found a bus stop. Some of the route numbers seemed familiar, and the schedule said they were still running.

Meanwhile the rain kept falling and I kept shivering and the pain from all the sore muscles and the scrapes and bruises started catching up to me and despite all that I couldn't keep from smiling.

the best years of our lives

Sometimes, there is only starting over to look forward to. Sometimes we can't even have that. I've fucked up the past four years of my life--or maybe just a little more than that now. It feels like forever ago that I was--

There was something about her smile, I think. I would have been happy spending the rest of my life making her smile. Maybe that's all there was. Maybe in the end everything was just about her smile and her lips and that spot just below her ear. Maybe we were always bound for shipwreck, and there was nothing we could do about it. There was a time I could still feel her lips on my neck, her arms around me, still hear the catch in her voice as she told me to leave. I still remember where it all happened, but as I sit there in the lobby of the hotel where she worked, somehow it's all gone.

--with her, and then it was taking flight and making every mistake I possibly could, because nothing worked anymore. I remember most of them pretty vividly. The ones I don't are usually because I was so drunk I couldn't remember anything. I still mostly know what happened, anyway. It's not that I made enemies so much as I lost friends. It was always me. Sometimes they just wanted to help.

She called me one night. Not quite out of the blue but close enough as far as I'm concerned. "I'm worried about you," she said. I told her to fuck herself. She said, "I still care about you. I--you were part of my life, you know? I don't want you to--"

I hung up. She tried again and I just let the phone ring. I deleted her number. I wouldn't see her again for two years.

After a while I found somewhere I could hide. Nobody really knew me. I thought maybe I could start over, and I did all right. I found new friends. I had a nice girlfriend. But there were always ghosts. I'd wake up--not screaming, but panicked, sweating, breathing heavily. Nightmares, I guess, but I just called them ghosts. Things that could have been, things I killed.

She called me again one day. It was winter. It was cold. She said she'd heard I was in town. She asked if maybe I wanted to get coffee. She was wearing a scarf. It's all I can think of when I think of her now. Her in a scarf and a winter coat, with her hands around a cup of coffee. Her smile is different. It's not for me anymore.

That doesn't go away if you hide. My girlfriend left--amicably, this time, headed south where I couldn't go. I wasn't sad to see her go. I'm not sure what that means. I've been seeing this new girl for a few weeks now. I think I like her, but it's hard to say. I've told her about the past four years, or maybe a little bit more. I'm trying to keep in touch with the people I ran away from.

I'm not sure if it's successful. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be. I'm not sure if this will work. I wanted to start over. Someone who wouldn't know who I am so I wouldn't have to be who I am. Maybe it's time to find a new home.

my eternal love

She is, if I had to describe her in a word, an excellent person. She does not agonize over the meaning of words, or the meaning of things, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. She is very beautiful and witty and clever. I would be lucky to have her.

She says she loves me.

I tell her, "Say again?"

"I said I love you," she says.

And I can't just say, "But what do you mean?" because it's always right there. I'm not sure why my panic instincts are kicking in now, but I know she sees my hand shaking as I take a sip of wine. Crestfallen seems like the best word for how she looks here. Or perhaps deflated. She dips a finger in her water and runs it along the edge of her wine glass. It hums faintly. She does this because it means she does not have to look at my eyes.

A week ago we were in the sort of place where you do not drink wine. She was finished with her meal, and stealing what remained of my french fries. She looked so happy, sitting at a greasy dive with me, running on cheap beer and fried food. I told her I enjoyed myself, and for just a moment she seemed ecstatic. She said there's nowhere she'd rather be.

Today there are no french fries to steal and the food is decidedly less greasy. It is the sort of place you go to for wedding proposals and important anniversaries. I am here thinking about love and eternity and trying to buy time. I'm thinking about missed opportunities. I'm thinking about the future.

After all the french fries were gone, we paid the check and walked home in the cool autumn air. Cold, not cool. Just enough to be uncomfortable. As I went to kiss her good night she said she had been sick for the past few days, she didn't want me to catch anything. I kissed her anyway, because it was the thing to do just then.

Now the moment is past and she is drawing up her dignity and saying, "It's really nice here," and what else is there for me to do but say "Yes, it is, I'm glad you came?"

days like this

She's talking about something like freedom or art or something else lofty, and all I can think about is how nice it is outside, and how there's just something satisfying about walking into the wind with my coat and hair flowing--and then she's expecting a response and I start with that little shrug I do, the "what can you do?" gesture with that little apologetic smirk, and that's not enough so I say something like "yeah, exactly," and then, speech over, the conversation lulls, and right away it's me saying, "Oh man, I read the dumbest thing in the New York Times" and then it's my turn for a story, and it's the sort of sarcastic thing where I can tell before I'm finished it's going to fall flat, but she's smiling and she asks me a question about it--the sort that means she was actually listening--and I shrug and try to answer, but she's quicker on her feet than I am, I wasn't expecting a response, and now I can't tell what she's thinking, or if that smirk is because she thinks I'm clever or because she thinks I'm stupid, and then she says something else and the moment's over and she's moving past it and she's talking about something else, and now I know she's made up her mind about it already, and I don't know what her decision is so I can't follow her lead, and she's finally completely lost me.

free

She is obsessed with locks and keys. She picked her first lock on her sixteenth birthday. Now she collects old keys, and she knows exactly what each one of them goes to. She likes to say that every key has its lock. There is a line in Pink Floyd which uses "pick her locks" as a euphemism for sex, and it is her favorite line in music, though she can't quite explain why. It has something to do with exploring, mystery, and freedom. As far as she is concerned, freedom is defined by boundaries--boundaries which exist to be broken.

She doesn't know how to tell the boy she has been casually dating that she is not interested in a relationship, especially because it is only true concerning him, specifically. She doesn't know that he isn't really, either, and is just too nice to tell her and too introverted to try to bring it up. He is philosophically inclined and wishes he were more adventurous, but he is afraid of everything--but most of all of being chained down.

His ex-girlfriend is primarily his ex because she was not philosophically inclined, and he mistook this as meaning that she was not intellectually curious. She is not worried about the meaning of things. She likes secrets, especially when she can share them with someone, and values spontaneity, though she sometimes wonders if this is a fault.

Before him, she dated me for a few weeks until the summer was over and I decided it was better to fly across the country, because my idea of adventurous is abandoning a good thing to go exploring something completely unknown, I think just to remind myself I'm still free. And mostly I'm happy with that, except last night I was drunk on the floor with my girlfriend, and it was 4 am and we were staring at the window and I asked her if freedom is worth it.

Freedom is her lips on my neck as she whispers that it definitely is, so long as freedom means us. It's a red wine hangover in the morning and going to brunch in the same clothes you were wearing last night, and telling stories over bad coffee about the little town you left behind. I'm not sure if it's worth it, but days like this it sure feels like it.

forever

We've been waiting for the train for days now. Maybe even weeks. It's hard to really tell, because time has stopped. After the train went by without stopping, everything else stopped. The station clock has been at 2:18 in the afternoon since it passed. And we're here, sitting, waiting, talking.

I want to say it's beautiful. It was, too, when I first noticed. It's one of those moments I always hoped would last forever: where nothing really matters and you're just killing time. There's no objective, no expectations. Just words, idle chatter to pass the time. A conversation with infinite potential. A conversation that will ultimately be interrupted.

Except this one hasn't been. She hasn't noticed, or if she has, she hasn't let on. 2:18. She is cheerful and noncommittal. She smiles easily, she jokes, she laughs. She is enjoying herself because she knows that as soon as it is not 2:18 it will all be over and none of it will have made a difference.

And I apparently have all eternity to make this moment matter.

stuff

I didn't manage to save much from the fire. Just my bag, which has a notebook and a netbook and a change of clothes. Everything is gone now.

It's not like I had much to begin with. Some books, some CDs, some clothes, some other random things. I used even less of it. It was just stuff. That's what I always said. I wasn't worried about it. It was fine. That's what I said when I called her asking for a place to stay. "That's terrible," she said. "It's just stuff," I said. "It's fine."

She picked me up outside. We drove around for a while, not saying much. Eventually we stopped in front of her place. "Thanks for letting me stay," I said. She nodded. We went inside. I sat on her couch and she went into her room and came out with a blanket and a pillow. Her blanket. Her pillow. "Let me know if you need anything," she said.

Then she saud, "You sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine, really."

"It's just, you're always smiling. Except you're not now. I've never seen you not smiling."

I shrugged.

"It's like you said, right? It's just stuff. And stuff just ties you down, right? Look at me. I can't leave this place."

I looked around. It was a nice place in a great location for a good price. "I guess."

"So you're free now. You can go anywhere. It's--God, I'm almost jealous."

I didn't ask if almost was the key word. Instead I tried to smile. "Yeah. I guess you're right. I'm free."

She stared at me for a long while, then said, "I'm just--let me know if you need anything."

She was probably right. I was free. I spent the rest of the evening sitting on her couch, staring at her wall.

bus connections

Today I was waiting for a bus that was running late, so I decided to jump on the next bus that came by, instead. I didn't know where it was going. I asked the driver. All I knew is I'd never been to the neighborhood before. It was perfect. I rode until the terminal, and got off and found another bus going somewhere else I'd never even heard of. Halfway there I got off and walked several blocks off the nearest side street. I asked the first person I saw where the best place is to get some decent coffee around here, and he directed me to a little cafe off another side street.

I had no idea where I was by this point, and the diner was the sort of dingy out of the way greasy spoon the locals love, but nobody else has any cause to visit--in short, a beautiful place that would be constantly crowded in a nicer district but instead has a steady patronage of incredibly loyal regulars.

The sort of place a guy like me, who walks in looking completely lost, looks like an outsider--the kind of outsider who gets asked questions like "So where are you from?" because they know it's not around here. I tell them and they ask me what I'm doing so far out here, and have I been here before? I tell them no, and that I honestly have no idea.

But this is some damn good coffee.

formulaic

She talks about lots of things I don't understand. Arcane formulae and numbers and terms that I don't understand. I don't know if I'm supposed to understand, or at least I don't know which ones I'm supposed to understand. Is that one important, or is it just there for show? What do they all mean? And so she talks and I write down what I can remember and I ask her very nicely to repeat it and she does, and she tries to use words I'll understand but sometimes that just makes it worse, because then it's so close, like I can almost see it.

Mostly, though, I come so I can watch her lips move while she tries to teach me. Maybe that's not a very good way to learn.

She helps me work through it and I write everything she says down obediently but sometimes I can't figure it out and she gets frustrated and does it for me. I don't think she'd say she's getting frustrated. She's trying to help. She wants me to see how she does it. I only see her hands and her writing. It's not neat. It's tiny and angular and hard to read. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between the numbers and the letters and the symbols. Sometimes I can't tell if it's just an unintentional mark.

And then I screw up again and her hand is on mine and I can't think of anything else.

tired smile

She is sullen over coffee. Her eyes won't meet mine, and she draws on her napkin with her finger. Neither of us talk much--because today is the sort of day where I need coffee, and I'm only drinking water. I'm not sure why she's silent. And the important thing is to never ask, not directly.

She's not really touching her coffee, either. Now she leans back with her arms folded and sighs, and I'm not going to ask about that, either. People always ask me what's wrong when I sigh. I'm usually just tired. It's hard to have to justify your breathing. Now she looks out the window with an expression I can't read--it's either longing or the type of boredom or exhaustion or whatever where you'd rather be anywhere but here. I suppose they're really the same thing, in the end.

And then, I smile and say something completely inane about the day, some stupid unremarkable thing that only really seems funny when the only sleep you've had in the past few nights came in the form of a cup of coffee. She smiles too. It's the sort of smile that comes with relief.

sunrise in a good way

She doesn't close her blinds. They're broken. Her room faces east, and the sun comes in when it's morning and she has such a clear view of the city and the sky.

That's what woke me up this morning, and it's been forever since I'd seen a sunrise. I don't know why that makes a difference. I never did. We even argued about it, once. A sunset is fleeting. A sunrise lasts all day. I don't think I said that right, but I'm okay with that. It was so clean. I probably woke her up sitting up to see it better. "It wakes me up every day," she said.

My blinds aren't broken. I keep them closed all the time now, even when it's day. I don't want to let the heat out. My room is dark and the only light is cold and sterile. I'm not sure why sterile is different from clean, either. "I'm still not sick of it," she said.

I didn't have anything to say. I asked if she was going back to sleep. She shook her head. I asked if she wanted me to make some tea.

By the time the water boiled, of course, the sun had basically risen. The horizon was still a pale shade of pink. We drank tea and curled up under blankets. I don't think mornings are supposed to feel so decadent.

crooked smile

One time, my sister left a comment on one of my Facebook photos saying I'm never smiling in them, which is true. I don't smile. I don't laugh. I know I've talked to her about this but I don't know if this was before or after her comment. I don't do so good at remembering these things. Sometimes I'm better than others.

Smiling. Ever since my girlfriend told me I'm smiling all the time I've thought about smiles constantly. I look at pictures of me smiling and I wonder why I look like that. I smile in the mirror and wonder why it's so crooked, why it looks so fake. I'm a good actor, so long as you don't expect me to smile. I look at pictures of her and I notice she's always smiling in them, and she used to hate cameras. It's like she couldn't help herself. She smiled like it was a secret. I always wondered if I was ever really smiling all the time.

I look at pictures of my sister, who smiles like a cat--she's happy and happy to be happy. It's smug, but not in an arch or condescending way at all. When she's smiling she's showing it off. That's her in photographs. She really appreciates being happy.

I know my smile wasn't always crooked. I'm not sure where that came from. It didn't used to be so wry and skeptical, so arch, so put-on. I didn't used to be afraid to admit that I'm having fun, without any sort of commentary on who I am or what that means. I didn't used to obsess over people who could look like that.

the error of my ways

I'm worried a lot lately. More than usual, anyway. I feel like there are a lot of mistakes I've made. Well, I know there are. I say it all the time, even: "We all make mistakes." "It happens to the best of us." I make it into platitudes and jokes, and people laugh politely, I think because they don't know that I'm only half joking. They think it's just some sort of game.

There was a girl, once, who really laughed at them. Can I say girl? They tell me that it's not a very progressive word, that it's demeaning. I don't know anything about that. I just know that I like the sound of it better. "Women" sounds like a word for the type of person who tells you that "girls" is a term which is derogatory. I don't want to hang out with women.

I was talking about laughing at my jokes, though. I really appreciated it. I couldn't say that, though, because how do you say that without sounding like you're just desperate to sound funny? I'm not. But you only find that sort of thing funny if you really understand that when I tell you, "I'm pretentious," it's not just a thing I say so you will like me. I really think that.

The other night I turned down an invitation to go to a party. I stayed in with a poet with punk rock aesthetics. We watched our favorite sitcoms from the 90's on Hulu, and drank coffee liqueur and smoked Parliaments. We listened to Weezer. We talked about kittens. We told stories that were mostly honest, or at least embarrassing.

At midnight I wondered aloud if I should try to catch public transit back home. She gave me a smile that would have been coy if she were still sober and suggested that she had room for me at her apartment. I kissed her, and then I realized that it was the first time in longer than I could remember that I'd done so because I wanted to, not just because I felt like it was expected. Like the girl who laughed at my jokes, I didn't know how to tell her this. I'm trying to be genuine. Sometimes I'm not so good at it.

Later, when my hands found the clasp of her bra and deftly unhooked it, I told her how we'd all practiced that with a padded bra that we found as a prop in an old theatre's dressing room in high school, just idiot kids hoping for an opportunity to look suave in the future. She laughed. I am good at making some people laugh.

Even though it's fall now the sun still came through her window too early and just made the headache worse, and I can't sleep with her there, but I can't just leave and I can't just leave a note, and I worry that I've already fucked everything up. Maybe I wasn't genuine enough, or I told her too much. Maybe I worry too much. Maybe I'm just worried that I obsess too much and I will act too uncaring. I don't know. I'm worried.

I just want everything to be okay. I know there's only so many opportunities you get and I don't know when the last one is going to be. You have to get it right. You have to plan ahead. You have to assume that every chance you get will be your last.

The next day when I finally went home I was really tired and went to bed early. I slept right through her phone call and her text messages. Today I called her while I was eating lunch and she didn't pick up. My coffee and cigarettes taste like her.

accident

My sister called to ask me about the accident. She'd always wondered, after it happened. Like most things, we never really discussed it. I think she assumed that I remembered it at all.

I knew it happened, of course. It was hard to miss. The neck brace, the hospital. Calling her up on Christmas eve. Hi, this is Rob. I just--I'm not going to be able to make it. Could you tell dad--no, I'm fine--there was just an accident. No, I wasn't--yes, I'm all right, I just--no, I'm fine. Really. I love you too. I have to go. It's coming home in the new year with all the Christmas decorations still up, and the neck brace isn't so bad but suddenly it's just so sad that you weren't there. At least they kept them up. They had a little party for me when I got home.

It's the stupid little things like that you never talk about. She was there for most of it. She knew. And we never talked about the things we weren't both there for. Maybe this was her attempt to start, but there wasn't even a cinematic moment of realization. I woke up and I knew I was in the hospital. And they told me what happened, more or less. I was lucky. I should be more careful.

At the time I wasn't thinking of home. I was thinking of a boy who smiles easily and sincerely and who can laugh at anything. My smile is crooked and contrived and I mostly just sneer. "You're lucky. You should be more careful." I wish one of those statements were true.

The driver was apologetic. She was frightened that I would sue. She didn't know what to do and she admitted fault and did everything she could to make me happy and if I wanted to I could have taken her for everything she's worth. Instead I took her out to dinner, on me, after my sister called to ask. It was six months on. I asked her if she remembered what happened. She was still apologizing, and I told her we all make mistakes.

Eventually that night her smile came easily, and we both made mistakes, and after, when she was asleep, I called my sister and told her that I still didn't remember what happened at the accident. But I told her about the boy who smiled, and how I didn't smile enough, and how that's why everything went wrong. I told her that sometimes the worst thing you can be is close to someone.

wordsmith

Kate spends her evenings working with the subtle nuances of language, carefully placing this word here, that word there. She strings words together until they are beautiful, until they are perfect. She is good at it. Words are exciting, and she often says there is nothing she likes more than a particularly elegant turn of phrase. Her mother once told her that words are nothing without action. Her mother reads romance novels from supermarket checkout lines.

There is a girl who works in her building at front desk sometimes, who is usually reading while she is working. Every day it is a new book and every day it is a different kind of book. She is not there every day. Kate has never had a conversation with her--all they ever say to one another is "Hello," and "thank you." She has never shown her how she can put together pretty words. Sometimes, when she hands the girl at the front desk her identification card, their hands touch, on accident, and Kate smiles. She says "thank you" because she means it, though she is fairly certain she does not mean it for anything to do with checking her ID.

She frequently resolves to say something, or write something, something beautiful and captivating. Nothing seems to fit, which is not a new experience, but it is frustrating nevertheless. She feels that if she cannot write about something it must be because she does not understand it.

It is roughly eleven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. She is not expecting to see the girl at the front desk, but she is working there anyway, reading a book by Richard Feynman. She looks up and smiles at Kate as she enters. She says, "Hi."

Kate says, "Hello," and hands over her identification. Then she says, "Thanks," and smiles again, and as she walks past, very nearly stops to say something else.

broken sky

I'd known her for years but it wasn't until one morning under a broken sky I really felt like I understood her. She was staying on my couch, and I had work in the morning. I woke early and walked out into the living room and she was there, not asleep, not really awake, with one leg curled under her and the other pulled up to her chest. She watched me without word or acknowledgement. I showered and got dressed. She was still completely silent as I left.

The sky cleared up to sunny during the morning, and by the afternoon it was that apocalyptic shade of autumnal grey, with the faintest breeze and a temperature just chilly enough to remind you summer is long dead. The sky was broken again by the evening, and she was sitting on the steps of my building with a cigarette.

We didn't say anything, or even look at each other, as I sat next to her. She handed me a cigarette and I lit up and watched the sky go dark and the evening people walking past, and there was this weird clarity to everything. None of it made any sense and I knew it all.

Her hand brushed my shoulder as she walked back inside. I didn't look up. I didn't have to.