Chapter One

He was inside her, still she was empty. Her voice gone. She could see it in the distance. A pinprick of sound adrift in a vast silence. All her thoughts reduced to fairy tales. Wolves and children. Blood and semen. Beginning. Middle. End. No pauses. No places. Only protagonists and characters punching at the wind.

All the impossible places where we know each other.

She imagined herself to be currency. To be spent. Her value in what could be purchased.

He was soft and heavy. Like the broken chemistry of touch. The callous dynamics of humanity. All roar and weather. Graceless inertia negotiating the hungry charms of sympathy.

The house came into view and she thought it should've been bigger. It was small, but hollow. That seemed familiar to her. Everything disproportionate.

They drank like they knew each other. But everything about them was strangers except their loneliness. She lied and said it mattered because she wanted to understand him.

Morning turned hard. They were lost. Or finally knew they had been.

It didn't matter. She wasn't trying to go anywhere.