I'm Not Ugly But I'm Not Pretty

I'm Mesmerized By The Way His Fingers Move Confidently Along Her Skin, As Though Her Body Is His To Reat And Touch And Tend To. She Was Mine Before She Was Yours: The Words Are There, Unexpectedly, Surging From My Throat To My Tongue. I Swallow Them Back.

But For Now, The Future, Like The Past, Means Nothing. For Now, There Is Only A Homestead Built Of Trash And Scraps, At The Edge Of A Broken City, Just Beyond A Towering City Dump; And Our Arrival-hungry, And Half-frozen, To A Place Of Food And Water And Walls That Keep Out The Brutal Winds. This, For Us, Is Heaven.

He’s Speaking In The Tone Of Voice That Everyone Uses When They’re About To Break You Apart. Gentle—kind, Even—like They Can Make The News Sound Better Just By Speaking In A Lullaby Voice.

Now, After So Many Years, I Understand What The Coldness Was And Where It Came From—this Sense That Everything Is Lost, And Worthless, And Meaningless.

It Strikes Me How Strange People Are. You Can See Them Every Day - You Can Think You Know Them - And Then You Fшnd Out You Hardly Know Them At All.