Photo by hybridnighthawk on Unsplash
At first, I believed it was an intrusion — the dark, prickly hairs emerging from a landscape of undifferentiated pores.
There was no one to consult. My parents were at work, like always, leaving me alone in the house. To pass the time, I pressed my leg hair between my fingers. I gnawed on it like grass; I teased it, combed it, tried to impose some sort of order on what was otherwise a wilderness. When the light was at its strongest, I plucked a single hair and watched its edges glow a deep red.
Where did you come from?
Why are you here?
I speak to my leg hair as I would speak to myself. Which is to say: with suspicion. Which is to say: with one ear trained to the sounds of a door opening and closing.
I used to play with a boy who was one year older than me. He liked to stick ants in my orifices. He made up a points system: two points for ears, three for nostrils — four if he got both at the same time — five for mouth. Asshole was ten points, the top prize. We played next to the square of preserved marshland that separated our two housing units. The entire area used to be a marsh, or so I had been told when our family moved here. Now there was the creek and this square, both of which were owned by the development company. Runoff from the local reservoir kept the earth muddy and teeming with life year-round.
An ant can carry up to twenty times its own body weight. Most humans can barely carry a third. Pretty pathetic, huh? Ants definitely have us beat. That’s why I like to call this game “survival of the fittest.”
Hold still.
Normally the ants would have been rolled into slick undifferentiated balls between my friend’s fingers, but from time to time he would manage to coerce one onto a leaf or a twig, and so when it finally reached me I could feel the legs twitching, the tiny body spasming and contorting against the encroaching darkness. I never screamed. I just dug my nails into the earth, shut my eyes, and prayed that the ant would find its way out of those uninhabitable caves. Don’t you understand, I would think, picturing the models of ant colonies I had seen in museums, the delicate network of interlocking veins and somber, diamond-shaped rooms — there is no place for you here. Please leave while you still have the chance.
I never told anyone about this game. I would lie awake at night, wrapped as tightly as possible in the sheets, shaking violently whenever I thought I felt a pinprick of movement, the whisper of tiny legs making its way up my body. I would hear my friend’s voice in the dark: Holdstillholdstillholdstill.
My parents have been saying that we won’t be here for much longer. Soon we’ll move into an even bigger house, with plenty of space to run around and play. As soon as my mother gets home from work, I crawl out of bed and listen to her going over the details on the phone, training herself to speak the way all her friends and coworkers speak. My father stands behind her, one hand on her back. Sometimes he moves the hand around in circles, or tenses it into a claw, scratching slowly. Then he’ll usually kiss my mother’s ear and tell her that she’s doing a great job. I hold my breath — waiting for something, I can’t say what.
I know that I should be excited. A whole backyard to ourselves. My very own bathroom. When we visited the open house, my parents let me flip through a plastic booklet that showed the layout of every room. I saw life unfolding there: shared meals in the kitchen, photos on the living room mantel, a Christmas tree under the staircase. We would be the perfect American family of my mother’s dreams.
A thin band of sunlight moves along the wall. I stare at the light and imagine this house without us. The front door opening onto a flight of stairs, the living room and kitchen unfurling to the right. In the living room, the old leather couch, the glass coffee table with the dish of porcelain fruit, the TV on the TV stand. Someone else’s father is watching a show, something I’ve never seen before. In the kitchen, someone else’s mother picks at the remains of a spoiled, ant-infested peach. Someone else walks up the stairs, stopping themselves in the dark, narrow hallway — my room at one end, my parents’ at the other, right next to our shared bathroom. They push open my door…
Who is this someone else?
I have been formulating a new question for my leg hair. It sits on the rim of my lips, already spoken, but not quite vocalized. My hesitation stems from a fear of scraping away my last meager line of defense. The other day I was moping around, shhhing my leg hair across the carpeted floor, when I stumbled upon the razor my parents gave me for my most recent birthday.
Would you like to meet your maker? I say, my voice a warm easterly wind. The follicles tremble in anticipation.
My friend was a child model. Someone had approached him and his mother in the mall with a flier for commercial auditions. They said I had an “interesting” look, he said, mimicking air-quotes with his fingers. I think that just means they love halfies. His mother had been elated at the idea, and spent the next few months driving him to auditions and photoshoots, eventually quitting her job at the Chinese grocery store so they could build up his portfolio. She hated having to be away from me all the time after my dad left. This way we would always be together. As he talked, I stared at the ceiling — my friend’s mother was often bedridden with migraines. They hadn’t taken things too seriously at first, but when my friend actually started earning money, his mother grew stricter and more quick-tempered. I was the only person he was allowed to see in the neighborhood; according to my friend, she didn’t let him play with anyone she thought could be a bad influence.
Lucky you, he said, turning his attention back to the nature documentary that played in silence on the TV. I repeated my friend’s words to myself, considering whether they might be true. A flock of large gray birds was diving into the Arctic Ocean when he turned back to me and said, Do you know what that is?
I followed my friend’s eyeline to a spot on my leg, about halfway between the crease of my folded knee and the kneecap. For months I believed that what I was seeing had to be a blemish of some sort: it resembled a tiny mound with a faintly dark center, the surface hard and eerily smooth.
I said I wasn’t sure.
It’s an ingrown hair. My mom gets them all the time. Here.
My friend repositioned himself so that he was facing me.
Let me get it out.
He pinched the mound between his thumb and pointer finger. I turned away instinctively, shifting my gaze first to the shadow of the TV stand, then to his face. The features were tightened in concentration, but their beauty still shone through — the thick, dark hair, darker than mine (a bruising pain as he started to push); the wispy eyebrows, an exact copy of his mother’s; the round eyes with their elaborately curled eyelashes; the smooth slope of the nose; the lips and chin in preternatural alignment. He looked like what I secretly hoped I looked like, the version of myself I caught glimpses of occasionally in darkened glass and murky pools of water.
A sharper, redder pain, then the unsettling relief of cool liquid. I watched between my friend’s fingers as pus began to emerge from the mound, viscous and greenish-white, almost the consistency of toothpaste squeezed from a tube. The pus curled in on itself, then stopped.
I asked if his mother’s ingrown hairs ever looked like this. He laughed, releasing his grip before grabbing a tissue from under the table. Not usually, he said. I wasn’t surprised. My friend’s mother was the cleanest looking person I had ever met. Sometimes, if I came over too early, I would catch a glimpse of the two of them in the bathroom, my friend on a stool behind his mother, curling her hair or gently pounding her back while she applied expensive looking cream to her face and neck. She would mutter something incomprehensible to him — my friend later told me it was Fujianese — then trace her pointer fingers along her brow bone and up the sides of her jaw. I hardly ever saw her smile, just purse her lips in a vaguely satisfied way.
One time my friend’s mother caught me staring. She closed the bathroom door behind her and walked up to me. Where is your mommy? she said, her hands crossed in front of her stomach. Does she know you’re here? My friend was trying to make eye contact with me through a crack in the door.
I told her my mother was at work.
And your daddy?
The same.
Your parents should know where you are at all times. I would never let my child go anywhere without telling me first. Why don’t you check if someone’s home?
Nobody’s home, I wanted to say. Nobody’s ever home. I don’t know why she thought I was lying. Still, I had turned around and left, waiting in my empty house until my friend called me and told me it was safe to return.
Ingrown hairs usually come out all at once, he continued, blotting with his tissue. You’ve left yours in too long. I looked back down and saw the spot eyeing me coyly, a single strand of hair languishing under a milky layer of pus.
The pain was starting to thin. My friend had gotten a pair of tweezers and was picking at the stubborn hair. He rubbed along the skin with his thumb.
It’s almost out. Stop squirming so much.
My dear leg hair, I can still make out the scar, faded to a dull brown. I can feel the hair being twisted and pulled, as you, too, will be. My friend widens his eyes, his face just inches from mine as he leans down to get a closer look. His poreless skin gleams, and he smells of jasmine and tea tree oil, his mother’s favorite scents. When he finally removes the hair, the last few drops of pus sputter out, followed by the ants: hundreds and hundreds of ants, spilling out and over every surface, our two bodies. We are one writhing, seething mass.
My friend straddled my chest, pinning down my arms with his knees. He unwrapped a piece of candy and pointed his face towards the sky. I hate gray weather. Why can’t it just rain already? The candy was green. I saw my mom talking to your mom yesterday. I asked him what they were talking about. He shrugged. They were standing outside, in the middle of the road. Something about how “people like to gossip.” Which was funny, because his mom gossiped all the time. It could get annoying, he continued, like when she would be driving him to a photo-shoot and for the entire car ride she couldn’t stop talking about some lady who had cut her in line at the grocery store, or a distant cousin who broke up with her boyfriend after he ran over a cat. My friend would shift his attention out the window until they reached their destination and she asked him what he thought. Then he would pause, nod, unbuckle himself, and bolt out of the car.
My friend’s nostrils flared. He was angry about something. She talks the same way about my dad, too. She’s always asking me what I remember about him. But I don’t remember him. I can’t even picture his face. The only thing I can see is the waterbed in our old house.
He took the candy from his mouth and placed it on the ground next to my ear.
Whatever. You won’t tell anyone, will you?
I shook my head. The dry grass snapped and hissed. At the far end of the field, a bright yellow sign read WARNING! WATCH WHERE YOU TREAD.
My friend’s knees were starting to bruise me, so I flexed my fingers in and out, in and out as a way of redirecting the pain. I wanted to talk about something boring and innocuous. The system of pipes that sprawled underneath all of our houses — how was it built? If my friend and I flushed at the same time, would our waste follow the same pathways? I was comforted by the idea that a piece of my insides and his might be out there somewhere, nestled side by side, slowly reintegrating into the natural order of things.
My friend must have felt something change, because he eased his weight slightly; I thought he was about to release me. Instead, he looked into my eyes and laughed.
I laughed, too. We laughed and laughed, and in that moment I saw us from the outside, as one of our mothers might have seen us. My hips, my eyelashes. My wavy brown hair. What I wouldn’t give to look like you, my mother would say, her hand pressed to my hot cheek. Maybe this was why our mothers had such a difficult time speaking to one another. It was too painful to see yourself in something that wasn’t at least half yours.
I think my mom’s jealous, he said. I wanted to respond, but a flash of movement in my periphery distracted me. When I looked at the candy again, it was covered in ants.
I closed my eyes and opened my mouth wide.
My mother suggested that I go for a swim with her. It was a rare free Saturday, and we had gathered in the living room with my father for ‘family time,’ which meant eating popsicles and trying to watch TV over the drone of the electric fan. My father was worried about the heatwave; why not stay inside, where it was cool?
Daddy hates taking risks, she said. Not like you and mommy, right, sweetie?
I nodded, licking the stick clean, then asked if my friend could come along. His mother usually never let him go anywhere. She thinks the world is scary, my friend had said. Like something is out to get us.
It makes zero sense. She doesn’t even realize that she’s the scary one. Asian moms are weird like that.
My mother motioned me over to the couch and hugged me tight. Of course, sweetie. Can you find your swimsuit? I think mommy left the pool passes in her purse.
The car smelled of new leather. My mother drove, while I sat in the front passenger seat, with my friend and his mother in the back. I expected my mother to use Chinese — a language she now reserved exclusively for restaurant workers, the aunties at the Chinese grocery store, and occasionally (very occasionally) my gonggong and popo — but she continued to speak in English, slower than she had ever spoken to me or my father. She was waiting, I realized, for my friend’s mother to catch up with her.
Have
you
been
to
the
swimming
pool
before?
In the side mirror, I watched for a change in my friend’s expression. He was resting his face on his closed fist, his lips parted ever so slightly.
He looked more beautiful than ever.
We have not, his mother replied. The answer came out half-strange, with an emphasis on the have instead of on the not. My mother switched on the turn signal. Tk-tk Tk-tk Tk-tk.
Oh, it’s lovely. They’ve been doing renovations for a while now. And I saw they planted flowers out front.
Are
you
excited
to
start
school?
I couldn’t tell if my mother knew she had made a mistake, or if she had simply gotten distracted by the turn. But she corrected herself immediately. Still a month to go, right? My friend’s reflection stirred. He dropped his hand and looked out the window. Yep, he said. Tk-tk Tk-tk Tk-tk. Just ahead, the pool came into focus. Pockets of impossibly blue water shimmered in the heat. I counted three other pool-goers, two white, one Indian. I wondered if they went to our school.
My friend’s mother muttered something in Chinese: [ ] The only word I could make out was America. I asked my mother what she said.
Why don’t you ask your friend?
I turned around, towards my friend’s actual face. He didn’t look back at me.
She said everything in America looks so clean, but it’s just as dirty as China.
We parked and quickly settled into a corner of the pool to undress. I had never seen this much of my friend’s bare skin before, but I was unsurprised to find that he was smooth and ideally proportioned, like a doll. My own body felt misshapen in comparison: bones jutting out in all the wrong places, too-long fingers and toes, one concave nipple. I thought of all the parts of my body that I had never seen, but my friend knew intimately.
Turn around, boys, my mother said. I winced as she lathered cold sunscreen on my back. My friend stood beside me and wiggled his toes. He was finally getting excited. Hey, we can race the breaststroke. I’m pretty good. Ma! He turned and shouted something at his mother. She raised her sunglasses and mouthed a single-word reply.
I asked my friend what he said.
What? Oh. Nothing. I just told her when we should leave.
We sprinted to the edge of the pool. I stepped in first. The water was lukewarm, its gauzy surface dotted with mosquitoes and cicada husks, leaves, seed pods, a brown Band-Aid. At the far end of the pool, the older boys were taking turns pushing each other in, sending ripples in our direction. A cicada made its way over to me. I held it steady, my open palm hovering just below the water. Its hollow body fidgeted back and forth: an almost alive thing, jeweled by sunlight. My friend knelt on the steps. He was staring at our mothers, who had put on visors and were fanning themselves. Didn’t he want to swim? Yeah, I’m just…I don’t know. It’s fine. He crouched down and launched himself underwater. My cicada floated away.
I followed him, performing what I hoped was a passable breaststroke. We moved side by side until the middle of the pool, where the water became too deep for me to stand. I retreated to the wall, breathless, my eyes stinging. When my friend resurfaced, he was alone. The taller white boy called him over to their group. Judging by the lilt of their voices, they were asking him questions, and my friend was answering hurriedly, almost in a gasp. They laughed a few times, loud enough that I could hear them even as I held my breath and stuck my face in the water. I looked back up, hoping to catch my friend’s eye, but he never turned around. I decided to look at the boys instead, at their rounded shoulders and delicate wrists, the slopes of their newly muscled backs. One of them sat on the rim of the pool. His half-submerged legs were slick with hair, thinning only at the point where thigh vanished into swimsuit. My eyes followed that point, newly alert, when I felt it again — a dull throbbing, the ants swarming in the dark center of me.
Another boy noticed me staring. My friend said something to him, and then all four of them laughed, a collective laugh that sounded more like a howl, their open mouths gleaming with teeth. Our mothers lay still on the recliners. I wish I could have cried out to my mother, demanded some kind of answer from her in a language that only the two of us understood. Mom! Please tell me what is happening. Please please please just tell me what I should do. I wanted to cry out, but I had no voice, no language — and so now I have you, my fussy little hairs. And you are not long for this world.
Aspects of leg hair that may be worth noting (prelude to beheading):
Soft
Yielding
Uneven
Fuzzy
Mischievous
Resistant to braiding or tying
Flammable?
Dead
And maybe, above all, disturbingly familiar. I had never expected my leg hair to resemble the hairs on my scalp and my brow, the hairs just beginning to shadow my armpits, my cupid’s bow, my groin. I had never expected my body to so cleanly resemble itself, even at its furthest extremities.
I would like to make a rope out of my leg hair. I would like to tie off each end with a rubber band, then lower the rope from my window, down to the lawn. I have no intention of being saved: my only wish is that my leg hair would find some purchase in the earth, with the many forms of life teeming just below the surface.
The razor is lying in the same position on the floor.
Hold still, please.
I couldn’t make out my father’s face in the glare of the sunlight. He was ripping out dandelion heads one by one, bending the stalks in half, and tossing them in a large plastic bucket. The development company had recently informed all residents that their lawns and yards must be consistently maintained: any plot that showed signs of disregard might be subject to fines, in addition to a strongly worded letter. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THIS IS A COMMUNITY. WE ALL HAVE TO DO OUR PART TO ENSURE THAT IT REMAINS A SAFE AND ORDERLY PLACE FOR ALL OF US.
I asked if I could go over to my friend’s house. We hadn’t seen each other in weeks. He and his mother had been flown out across the country for something big, he said. I’m not allowed to tell you. They had just gotten back.
Why don’t you ask him to come here? my father said. I could teach you boys how to mow the lawn. It’s a valuable skill, you know.
I had never invited my friend to our house before. It seemed irrelevant — the layout of our houses was exactly the same. Even our ovens were filled with a near-identical assortment of pots and pans. There was nothing I could offer him that my friend didn’t already have, and better.
My friend’s mother answered the door. She wore her hair in a loose bun, the top fastened by a butterfly-shaped clip. As soon as she saw me, she yelled something over her shoulder in Fujianese, pausing to cough harshly into her sleeve. From somewhere deep inside the house came my friend’s familiar monosyllabic reply: Uhn. Followed by the even tread of his socked feet.
His arm was in a cast. I looked to his mother, hoping for some explanation. She wrapped her cardigan more tightly across her chest. Be careful, she said, her eyes trained somewhere beyond me.
It’s fine, my friend said. He was scraping his socks against the concrete. I’m hungry. Do you have anything to eat?
I told him that my dad wanted to teach us how to use the lawn mower, but we could maybe eat something after. My voice felt strange: it had a ring of falseness, as if I were trying to sing along to the words of a song I barely knew. Race you, he said, and galloped ahead. I followed, pressing my palms against my ears. The air was filled with an awful buzzing.
My friend paused just a few feet from my house and knelt to the ground. He peered down at what must have been hundreds and hundreds of black ants emanating from a crack in the sidewalk. The ants vibrated, bodies weaving in and out, in and out, crawling on top of each other in a desperate bid to rejoin the whole.
Want to help me with something?
It was a neighbor from across the street, a white man I had never seen before. He carried a pair of huge garden shears in one hand.
Can you grab that for me?
He pointed to a large branch that lay on the stretch of grass closest to the street. My friend hadn’t taken his eyes off of the ants. I took up one end of the branch and helped carry it back to a pile in the man’s yard. Hey, thanks, he said, then held up the shears. I bet you’re wondering why I have these. He lifted his face to the two trees sprawling above us. One of the trees was far taller. Its branches and leaves blotted out the sky. From what I could tell, two of its uppermost branches had been chopped clean off. That guy’s been drinking up all the sunlight. I needed to let the little one breathe. The man walked up to the smaller tree. He placed his hand on the trunk and massaged along its length.
The bark was globbed with hardened, golden liquid. At least nine globs, spaced at more or less even intervals. It looked like sap.
Could be, he said, narrowing his eyes at me. Hey, your buddy — what’s his name?
I told him, and the man nodded slowly.
You two brothers? he said.
I shook my head.
You look like twins.
My friend stood up and faced us.
Hey, thanks again, the man said. I’ll see you around sometime.
I thanked him and ran back, my palms sweating, the taste of something bitter and metallic in my mouth. Fucking weirdo, my friend said. I didn’t realize he was allowed to swear.
We found my father in almost the exact same position as before, although the bucket of dandelion heads looked twice as full.
Good afternoon, sir. Thank you for having me.
My friend extended his hand. He was smiling the smile I recognized from photos.
Our pleasure, my father said. They shook hands. We’ve heard so much about you.
Later that day, we lay end-to-end on the identical couch in my friend’s identical living room. He was fast asleep from jet lag. We had gone to the marsh, and he had told me his mother was thinking of moving. She’s sick of this place, he had said, knocking his casted hand against a rock. I had run my hands through the water, newly freezing. All the bugs would be gone soon.
Where would they go? How would they survive?
Somewhere warmer, with more Chinese people. One of my mom’s cousins lives in California. Maybe there. My friend had crouched down, inspecting the glossy lichen that had appeared since our last visit. Plus, better gigs for acting and stuff.
You’ll miss me, he had added. It sounded like a command.
I knew he was right. I would miss him. I would miss his weight, the way he made me sensible to myself.
The TV screen flickered. The rerun of Planet Earth had ended, and the channel settled into a series of infomercials. I closed my eyes and rubbed my legs together in an effort to get to sleep. That’s when I noticed: a strange prickliness. Static. My body felt coarse, rough in a way that it never had before.
I hunched onto all fours, then slowly palmed my way towards my friend. Even in the harsh blue light, every inch of his skin remained smooth and unblemished. Did my friend’s mother have some sort of routine for him as well? Did she bathe him in creams, tonics, potions? When she was pregnant with him, did she subsist on a diet of pure spring water? My mother must have done something wrong. There must have been a time before I was born when I was also perfect, unblemished — when I was nothing but a bunchlet of cells, or even earlier, when I was less easily divisible, two organisms pooling somewhere just below my parents’ navels. Or earlier still. My mother liked to tell a story of when she was a girl attending middle school in a nearby city. She had been sent to stay with her aunt and uncle. Her uncle, she explained, was mentally ill, prone to hallucinations and screaming fits. During the Cultural Revolution, he had been nearly beaten to death by the Red Guards for refusing to attend the reeducation camps. His head injuries were so severe that he could no longer take care of himself.
He was jealous of her, she said. Jealous of her beauty, or her intelligence, or the fact that she was able to go to school, she was never entirely sure — but one night, while my mother was sleeping, he came into her room and tried to smother her with a pillow. My mother’s aunt heard them struggling and restrained him.
I never asked what happened afterwards. In my version of the memory, I am standing in the corner of the room, incapable of doing anything to help. It would be pointless even if I tried. My mother would fail to recognize me; I would be a stranger, a foreign invader, a threat. I hear my mother crying, and then I see, out of the corner of my eye, a dark rustling — ants are crawling up the banister. They have been headed for us all along.
My friend stood behind his mother in the driveway. She patted her forehead with what appeared to be a paper napkin folded into a triangle. The sun loomed directly overhead, so that her shadow swelled beneath her feet.
I followed my mother out the door and sat down at the foot of the stairs. Lovely to see you both, my mother said. She was using the voice she had trained herself to use. I love your hat.
My friend’s mother touched her head, as if to make sure that what my mother said was true. The hat was wide-brimmed, made of straw. A plastic peony sat glued atop the black ribbon.
Thank you. It was a gift.
She continued in Chinese. Her mouth grew wider and more animated, the syllables stretching her out from the inside. I strained to make out something, anything, but all I could understand were the sounds I knew to be my friend’s name.
My mother replied calmly, in English. I’m sure there must be some misunderstanding. That doesn’t sound like him at all.
[ ]
You know how boys are. They don’t know what they’re doing.
[ ]
I understand.
[ ]
No, he’s not allowed to stay up that late. Especially not on weekdays.
[ ]
So what are you saying?
[ ]
Can you repeat that?
[ ]
I want to know what he told you.
She waited for my friend to speak. I wondered if his face would change, if it would collapse into ugly sobs or settle into the smile I recognized from his headshots, but he just looked straight ahead, unmoving. My mom’s telling the truth, he said. Every word she said is true.
I drew my knees closer to my chest. Somewhere in the world, there were lizards that could sense heat with their tongues, venomous fish that glowed in the dark. A fox with blood red fur scanning the lip of a forest, treading over clumps of wet leaves and shreds of dirt-covered plastic.
My friend’s mother shoved the napkin into her bag. She glared at me.
I don’t want him coming near my son.
My mother shifted to the side, blocking me from view. Her voice lowered to a whisper, issuing what sounded like a single line of continuous, unbroken speech in a language I couldn’t quite place. As soon as she finished, my friend’s mother stepped backward, nodding slowly. They both began to laugh. I tried to make eye contact with my friend, but he was already walking away, dragging his feet along the asphalt. I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding. We’ll be seeing you, my mother said in between giggles. She tamped one hand over her mouth and waved with the other. When she turned around, she startled at the sight of me. Sweetie, you should go inside. It’ll be dark soon.
Separated from my body, the hairs are mute, stunned into silence. I can no longer recognize a single one. I run my hands along my legs, tenderly, tenderly, feeling for the places where the roots began. Something is moving down there, however many millimeters below the surface. Something is already growing. I am about to place it when the room dissolves, and then suddenly I am. Somewhere deepunder ground. The burrowsare impossibly dark, but. I don’t need eyes to see. Instead, I focuson the stream of movement,
the frenziedenergy that. Flows and eddies allaround me,
moving up or down, left or right, but. Always inunison,
always in pursuit of. More and more life. If
a shape threatens to obstruct my path, my body reacts
with. A preternaturalquickness. We bounce off of each other,
two objects sending signals in a language that. Needs no voice to beunderstood. Am I dead? Are we alive? Maybe both. A reflex is not the same as a conscious thought. An imperative should not be confused for love. Still, I would like to call it love, this casual maintenance, this unthinking desire to. Nurture the whole. Tired but. Unceasing. Wediganddiganddiguntilwefinally —
Scratch the surface. Light is not something you see, it’s.
Something you feel.