There is a kind of ache that doesn't come with anyone to blame. Most hard stories give you somewhere to put it. Someone lied. Someone left. Someone stopped answering, and you spent a month deciding what that meant. None of it is pleasant, but anger is at least usable. It gives you something to do with your hands while the thing hurts. This one doesn't offer that. Nobody behaved badly. You met a person, something in you went quiet in a way it doesn't usually go quiet, and the

There's a particular kind of night where you find yourself looking up at the sky without having decided to. You weren't thinking about the sky a second ago. Then something in you tilts your head back anyway. I used to think that was nothing — a reflex, the way you glance toward a loud sound. Lately I wonder if it's closer to recognition. As if some part of you already suspected something was there before you looked for it. I don't know if two people can be written into the sa