The builders understand the angles— how weight settles into a beam, how a line must lean before it can stand.
They take the time to dream, to envision, to let something unfinished sit beside them like a quiet companion.
In the late hours, when the world settles into dew and the last light leaves the window, they see it— not yet formed, but certain enough to return to.
They move toward it slowly.
Hands learning the material— the first press too hard, the surface pushing back, then giving slightly under the thumb.
There is a patience to it— a willingness to begin again without pretending that nothing failed along the way.
And when it sits just right in the place where positive and negative space hold one another— where the weight rests without shifting,
when something rises that did not exist before,
they step back grateful to recognize it—
not as completion, but as process and maybe cohesion.
Something new to sit beside. Something to enter.
Those who tear down move in starts.
They do not linger in spaces where people or places or ideas are becoming.
They look for structures already standing and rest their heads against pillars—cracked, flaking at the edges— trusting what still holds to hold for them.
Their attention sharpens there— at the point where structure meets strain, where something held together might give way— a thumb pressed once at the weakened place.
They have no questions— not how it was made, not why.
They do not stay long enough to understand what it required to stand at all.
Instead, they borrow from what surrounds them— picking up a word already spoken, wearing it as if their name were stitched inside,
and hold it just long enough for the next voice to take its place.
They wait for the world to hand them a reflection they can accept without question.
And while they wait,
they pull—
at the edge, where the fabric thins, at the seam where threads begin to separate,
at the place where something is most alive and therefore most vulnerable.
It does not take long.
What took time to imagine, to hold, to bring into form—
can be undone in a moment— a shift, a break in tension— and it gives.
Music wafting through the air or is that birds or Tinkerbell? I got some dust inside my eyes so it must be the fairy swooshing by.
Marching bands with brass and bass kings and princesses take their place to tell the story— the same one again: a far away land a witch and a hand given in fanfare to a sashed, bare-faced man.
There are rides to be taken heroes who capture and race down adrenaline-filled paths that feel like lov— no, rapture.
Slow and then fast through dazzling light enough to fly past the machine in the back and the character smoking with his head hung on a rack—
We agree not to see.
Lights flicker gold and then blue wait—did he just look or did he look through? A pause in the motion something like timing I take as a cue.
Confetti drifts ash, or snow touches my sleeve then lets me go I leave it there— a moment too long part of the set and now so am I
—and who am I?
I forget.
Voices echo layered thin— his or theirs or somewhere between I turn to see then let it be what it was I could have sworn the words pointed to you.
The track tilts— just slightly off enough to blame on atmosphere or thought I steady once then sit up again and see the path has gently bent
not back not through—
just near
A mirror placed at child-height glass returns a face I almost pass until it lingers half a beat—
more sure of you than it is of me
A worker sweeps the same small spot back and forth as if it’s not already clean already done—
I watch too long then call it one of those things that people repeat to keep the edges soft and the picture neat.
A door marked STAFF stands open wide no one there but light inside. I look—
then don’t—
then walk beyond
back into sound and colored air where something waits that isn’t there or isn’t mine— but knows my name well enough to feel the same
The music swells— or something like it close enough that I don’t fight it I take my place without a claim
Surrounded by air and invisible strings attaching to all corners of the universe, there lies a star in the sky. The star’s name is Vincent, his moniker bearing the stamp of the famous painter on Earth to whom his mother was introduced when one of his paintings was lost in space and drifted across her gaze.
Vincent is lazy, and his breath is a series of inhalations and exhalations shaped by boredom. He has learned not to expect entertainment from his fellow floating orbs. The splendor of their illumination is juxtaposed by their inability to sing or dance or, in any way, delight his fancy. They lie scattered across the galaxy, telling stories about the things they’ve never done, the places they’ve never been, and the memories they’ve never actually made.
The sky is not liquid, but it is still. Except when comets come screaming past their stuck counterparts, or when a star burns out and drifts away, movement is not allowed. Change rarely occurs. Vincent is fixed in a fixed state, and he has given in to the stuckness of his existence.
Vivienne is newer. Relatively new. She has not yet lost the fervor of her “what if” and dreams of destinations beyond the darkness and points of light by which she is surrounded. Vivienne is vivacious and full of wonder. Her curves have not yet been chipped away by the chisels of time or NASA’s rumbling past her looser rocks. She is intelligent, bright, an artist at her core who does not spend time lamenting her lack of limbs. Instead, she fills the sky with her songs and laughter and tells stories born in the dreams she has when she closes her eyes to sleep.
One day, a spacecraft flown by human hands nicked the side of Vincent’s ribs. It was clearly an unintended greeting, and it caused Vincent a lazy amount of consternation.
“The NASAs don’t understand space, am I right?” he dribbled out sarcastically as his body reacted to the impact, shifting ever so slightly to the right.
As his roundness rotated by infinitesimal degrees, Vincent suddenly saw a new perspective. The view he had held for centuries had been just slightly off to the left. As his eyes adjusted, he whispered into the darkness, “What the—”
Newness.
Vincent shook his head and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again, trying to adjust his vision. A bit near-sighted, he had to refocus once more. When his eyes opened the second time, his heart filled with wonder. He could see stars he had never seen before. A draft brushed against his back in an unfamiliar way. The stars newly visible to him were sleeping, ignoring the NASA that had just shifted his perspective.
One of the stars he had never seen before was snoring.
As Vincent would later learn, the snoring star’s name is Dick. Dick, known as Richard to those with whom he is not well acquainted, wears a smoking jacket and smokes a pipe in his mind. He pontificates on matters such as the romantic lives of the earliest stars and prides himself on knowing intimate details about the moons surrounding each of the planets.
For centuries, a rumor circulated that Dick once sent notes of love and longing to Europa. Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, has a voice like a hushed flute, high, soft, arresting. Dick’s love notes were legendary, poetic, stirring a romance so engaging that hardly any stars within several light-years slept during the centuries of their affair.
Until Europa broke his heart by falling in love with another of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede. Since then, Europa and Ganymede have whispered to one another, keeping their romance private. Ganymede is not nearly as showy a suitor as Dick.
And so, the sky lost its drama. It returned to the mundane: blackness, occasional pirate songs, the same stories told to the same stars, over and over again. The order of the sky began to resemble the Moose Lodge from The Flintstones, the same people, the same stories, the same faces.
Until the gods allowed a NASA to nick Vincent’s side.
That small disruption sparked the possibility of new sightlines, new encounters with stars whose old stories would be new to him. When two personalities meet for the first time, it is not only their lives that shift. Those around them feel it too. Energy renews. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not. Always for the new.
Vincent widened his eyes and took it in: the lighter shade of black in the upper right corner of his vision, the way surrounding light now touched the edges of his face, the unfamiliar stars whose voices he had heard but never seen.
A sense of wonder filled his old heart. Something stirred inside him. It sounded like a triangle tapped lightly, like Tibetan bells ringing, like a finger drawn slowly across the surface of a gong. A deep, peaceful awareness of life, and his aliveness.
Vivienne yawned, long and breathy, and opened her eyes as a NASA sped past her head. She blinked once. Then again.
And in that second blink, she became aware of two eyes she had never seen before.
They were looking back at her.
She blinked again.
Vincent wanted to speak, but instead, he blinked too. Four blinking eyes, fanning something into flame. A steady fire.
From that moment until now, Vincent and Vivienne hang on opposite ends of the sky. They do not speak. They do not sing. They do not send notes on the backs of passing NASAs.
They hang, separately, gently, precariously, held by invisible strings attached to all corners of the universe.
And they blink.
And open.
And blink.
And open.
They cannot move toward one another. They will never touch the surface of each other’s being. Even so, they remain connected, by the turning of Vincent’s perspective and by the quiet recognition that passed between them.
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them."
I'll try.
Believe them the first time, before an accumulation of words or glances offerings and reactions— retractions or silence.
I'll try.
But what about trust?
Projection can be a weapon unfair and blind but so can trust. So, what do we do with trust?
We've been told: trust but verify give to get extend until there is a reason
not to.
Surely, to give is to offer your vulnerability to open with an invitation to see— the world through safety and people through intimacy.
Exhale.
But what if they stab— not with iron but with words or quiet or gossip or lies?
A lesson wrapped in the progression of choosing to trust and learning wisdom.
And what of the mirror? Is it still true that we are who we are every time? The first time?
Time here is brief. Experience anything and you'll see— they and you and we can be the same the first time, the second time, and again until the end, or
we and you and me can become.
So, believe who they are but be gentle, too. They can change.
In Krakow, under the mutual agreement of cobblestones and centuries, I stopped for lunch because hunger, like history, does not wait for proper context.
A restaurant offering pierogi seemed more convincing than the Hard Rock Cafe, which had installed itself with great confidence in the wrong century.
A young woman greeted me.
Blond hair, a practiced smile, the unmistakable economy of someone who has already lived this day once before.
We spoke.
Nothing of consequence— which is to say, everything necessary.
And then the thought arrived with equal parts whimsy and angst:
why are our lives intersecting here?
She will remain— serving, walking, returning, knowing which streets curve and where to her laundry.
I will leave— to my kitchen, my coffee, my purple toothbrush, which performs its duties faithfully without ever asking where it is in the world.
Meanwhile—
each of us continues as the center of a system no telescope has fully mapped:
families in orbit, memories in storage, songs that arrive unannounced, conversations that replay with slight editorial improvements.
Entire infrastructures built without engineers.
Whole histories proceeding without witnesses.
We sit across from one another for less than an hour— long enough to exchange currency, not long enough to exchange lives.
She brings the food. I thank her.
This is recorded nowhere.
And yet—
somewhere in the vast accounting of everything that happens and is immediately forgotten,
our meeting persists as a minor, precise event—
like a crumb on a table, like a word almost remembered, like the brief and mutual illusion that we have interrupted each other’s lives.
Meanwhile, her life continues in all directions.
Mine does too.
Both of us, at intervals, certain of our centrality.
Both of us, entirely surrounded by things we will never know.
Despite the absence of any reliable signal— no drooping worthy of alarm, no crisping at the edges, no official declaration of thirst— the plant insists on requiring water at some precise and undisclosed moment.
Its leaves offer only minor adjustments, a change so slight it could be attributed to lighting, mood, or coincidence— the kind of evidence that refuses to testify.
And yet, water must be given.
Too early, and the roots object in silence. Too late, and the same silence deepens, as though agreement had been reached without my participation.
The purple one presents no difficulty. Six blooms at once, as if it had already reviewed the conditions of the room and signed without revision.
The pink one remains undecided. One bloom, paused indefinitely, neither withdrawn nor committed— a position I recognize.
There are, apparently, forms of life that do not improve under observation. This complicates matters.
My grandmother knew when to water them. Not through measurement, not by schedule, and certainly not by consulting the leaves for clarity. She stood near them, which was enough.
I stand near them with coffee. Again with afternoon tea.
The water disappears from the tray without acknowledgment or correction. No confirmation is issued.
The purple one continues, untroubled by my involvement.
The pink one— after a period of complete inaction, with no visible shift in circumstance— opens.
Nostalgia is slippery like a water snake. One deliberate squeeze and there it went.
Exit upon exit if you look at it. Look away, and beware it's return.
A mower hums somewhere beyond the houses, a duet of humming and bass, moving through the air because afternoons have always sounded this way.
A whisper of perfume passes— familiar, specific— caught for a second in the space between two steps.
A child runs ahead, hair lifting and falling across her forehead, light moving with it, time carried in the motion like once before with a different name.
The body looks at its wrist. What time is it— noon or 1987?
A recognition without language, already underway.
Memory follows in pieces.
You reach toward it— toward the full arrangement, the exact alignment of what it felt like to stand there.
Who you were. Who they were. Where, again? And, why?
Then without warning it arrives.
Complete. Immediate. Undivided.
Distance closes. The past takes its place inside the present, fully formed, in at least two of your senses.
Not because I need stronger reading glasses, though that may also be true.
Just small adjustments, little by little, the words end up on my nose.
Hello, words.
I tilt the page toward the window, hoping there’s something to borrow.
There isn’t.
I keep reading anyway.
It feels like I’ve stayed somewhere slightly longer than I was meant to, like a guest who hasn’t noticed everyone else has gone home.
I look up.
The room has already changed its mind— about me? About itself? The corners are gone. The floor is still there, I think.
I don’t remember the light leaving. I only notice that it has.
The book is still open in my hands. East of Eden, halfway through a sentence, continuing on without me, like a train speeding silently, and I am still on the platform.
I could turn on the lamp.
Way over there.
I try to read one more sentence, but I think I’ve lost the plot. Who is “dknfihd,” anyway?
Iris Lennox 