#ro kwon

I kept listening. Often, at parties, I could be found in the kitchen, a back porch, eliciting still more troubles. If people cried, I held damp hands. With the squash recruit, too; the ball-pit poet, the flautist; Tim, then Phil, it wasn't lust. Plain lust, I'd have respected. Instead, I craved the postcoital talks, the truths told in bed. I ate pain. I swilled tears. If I could take enough in, I'd have no space left to fit my own. In turn, I couldn't walk five minutes through Noxhurst without hearing a dozen hellos. Faces lit up if I walked into a room, the liking a light I could refract, giving it back. Phoebe, oh, I love that girl, people said, but it's possible they all just loved the reflected selves.

I want to live on a planet that can hold us. I believe we can all still help it, us, do so. If nothing else, why not try? Why not hope, and then act as if? This is our one wild, lone home; what other choice do we have?

The, one night, while I was taking a walk alone, I noticed a loud throng of students turning into a gate. It was left propped open; I followed them in. Hip-hop pulsed, rolled. Pale limbs shone. I'd learned that the alcohol table was the one place where I could stand without looking too isolated, and I was idling at my usual station, finishing a third drink, when a girl in a striped dress tripped.

But this is where I start having trouble, Phoebe. Buildings fell. People died. You once told me I hadn't even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying.