Aloneness is not weakness or bravery. It just is. It is a state of self that exists in me now regardless of how many people I share a room or a drink with. It exists in me even when I share and recognize it in others. Even beyond logic. I often crave it even as I’m experiencing it.
Short skirt, long jacket or Glinda the Good Fairy. That never the twain shall meet. I think this is wrong. I think the twain meet right at the intersection of my spine and shoulders. I think within me is the origin of universes. Soft, spongy, intersecting galaxies.
Those voices in your head: not all of them are wrong, and on a hard night running, one of them is willing to take charge for a minute and help you power through. Life is so dismal these days. It isn’t bad to sometimes let it work for you.
He said nothing, and didn’t pull a pack from his pants pocket the way she’d hoped. Instead, he just stared at her, in that ravenous way of theirs, a way she’d seen up close only once before.
Breaking the painful silence, she snapped open the purse again and pulls a little cigarette and lighter from some secret compartment, and lit it herself with a knowing, blase click. As she inhaled, she considered that his exhaustion and despair left him vulnerable in a way she was not entirely prepared for.
My seat, the catbird with the view of the whole busy, tiny trattoria where three waitresses attended to the full crowd, had offered this same view to a thousand other would-be someones. The cobblestones outside had brought a thousand thousand past the doorway.