they will name a street after us.

Figuring out how to live together is hard. To exist in community with people who constantly piss you off is exhausting, but ultimately: worth it. As Ms. Goldin says, it is sweet. But in between, there are these things that set our teeth on edge about each other, and we start smiling the kind of smiles that are about baring teeth to each other. We don’t let it show that it stings, or we shrug it off like it’s no big deal, and we keep a running catalog of hurts in our head and a dossier of every aesthetic political statement everyone we know has ever made in public and index it against our own internal emotional safety actuarial matrices. And sometimes, if we trust you, we send you a text, or give you a call, or whisper to you at a party, or point blank bring it up while we’re making you lunch: “Hey. Did you know you hurt me? Can we talk about that? I think I trust you enough to be vulnerable enough to tell you about this, even though it’s going to make me seem like an oversensitive bitch.” I suppose that’s just how you get through, with other people, because the only way to get through is with other people.

“Think of this—that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.”

“I thought sugar and silence were the same thing, thought you’d love me if you could best me, but I paid the cost of quiet.”