"I feel like we're in a movie, we're like a terrible trio of teens - that's what they would call us. But in the movie you would just see us wandering around the city, eating breakfast and going to get Tessa's ears pierced and you wouldn't know any of the terrible things actually going on, that would just be the subtext. Movie critics would debate over it, what it really means."
They laughed and we passed a joint around and I wondered how stable the balcony really was.
"There's a kid watching us," Tessa pointed out. Down in the corner of a window on the first floor, a little hassidic boy was peaking through the tightly drawn blinds.
"Yeah, there are always kids looking through windows here, they get really excited if you wave at them." I tried it - he didn't wave back, but shouted some things at me that I couldn't understand. He was too young to know he shouldn't be talking to us. Then Zach told us about his aunt and uncle who had converted; he said something about how it was like being in a cult. He went quiet again and disappeared into his phone and all his people, these people he thought he had to appease and the things he should believe so they might accept him again.

As we went back inside I turned and shouted bye! to the little boy down in the corner of the window. And to my surprise he shouted it back.

symbiose

When I'm placing napkins on a stack of plates and I get to the end to find I've chosen the same number of napkins as plates. Ten fingers perfectly interlocking. The full moon over a cornfield while my dad helps me attach a bike to the back of a car. The symmetry of the rectangular volleyball court on the fair grounds. Simon's eyes watching me across the room. Everything fits. Makes me feel like soon I will be whole again just like the moon.

This wasn't in fact her best year. It would instead be the year something strange happened to her. Not an event specifically, (though she would argue it was triggered by a man in the street spitting in her face) but there was something off about her. She gradually developed a wandering eye, accompanied by headaches and dizzy spells. She could no longer look herself straight in the mirror, couldn't grasp her face as a whole. One night she went away to a cabin with a man. They went to walk out on the frozen lake. She was bundled in so many layers she felt like an astronaut bouncing across the moon, a beer in each coat pocket. Her toes were the only part of her that was cold. They hurt really bad actually, but she refused to say anything and waited until he decide they head back. When they got back inside, her toes burned as they slowly warmed again and she wished they would have just frozen off. She would have traded them if her face could just go back to the way it was. She had depended on her face, with its symmetrical eyes, because it was all she really had to offer anybody. Later she sat on the concrete floor in the basement while he chopped fire wood. She asked him if he thought they were friends. He wasn't sure what to answer. Maybe she was imagining things, but it felt as though he couldn't look her straight in the face anymore either. 

tralala

Il y avait un nouveau à la chorale cette semaine; après le bar il m'a reconduit jusqu'au metro en me prenant la main. Désirer, approcher, prendre, aimer, protéger.