Why did she come?
               It’s funny I should start with a question, as that’s all I seem to do: ask questions.
               She didn’t really know me…at all, actually. Though I guess knowing someone is a rather indistinguishable thing; the point at which you say you know them, I mean. I say that because, really, getting to know oneself is a challenge—a mystery, almost. When can I say I know me? I shake my head, and blow air from my lips.
               She was wearing…not too much, I suppose. I remember her eyes, mostly, and the way her lashes shot up towards the sky, as though to flee from her soul. But I didn’t want to flee as I let her enter. And she came in like the night, but during the day.
               It was probably mostly dark, what she was wearing, as nothing caught my eye, besides her eyes—and lashes. I do know there were beads amid the flurry of her. Large ones, round ones, square blue and brown ones. The kind with holes and the kind with hooks, white and bone and silver letters. They didn’t seem to make much noise, the beads. Perhaps because of her silent feet. You know how a warrior dashing silently through the woods can be so screamingly loud, so absurdly deafening? One hardly notices the pride on which he runs.
               So it was I who opened the door, her feet that crossed the threshold. And the edge of my vision was sharp, unlike a dream. And her toes had on some pink paint.
               I said, “You’re here.” But I needed to keep talking, so I said, “You’re here, now.” She understood that with my expectancy came fright, but I understood nothing as I grasped for her arm. I was way too far away from her, so I brought her in and her face disclosed nothing. Apart from her lashes, of course. I wanted to back away but I was holding on too tight, like an anxious child, and I heard my devil say kiss her. And I blame it on him because he’s a different part of me, and an angel doesn’t kiss strangers, anyway. So I kissed her.

I closed the blinds because I didn’t want them to see me. But I forgot to twist the thingy, so it was only partially truthful. Me blind, me blind, me blind. So the sun was forced to draw patterns on the walls. I didn’t see them, the patterns I mean; that’s not where I was looking. I was seeing and not seeing, with the sharp edge of my vision—which is not to say the center, the point of my focus, was out of focus. On the contrary it was quite real—it was real—but something of it made it hard to remember. Like the tip of a tongue.