Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

I viewed parties like a job: they simply had to be done.

If the weirder the divide, the sweeter it was to cross.

I could put words on a page. Maybe I could learn to do it better. Maybe now that I’d been split open, made wiser, my words on a page could get closer to music.

“The song makes you feel the way she wishes you’d make yourself feel.”

that all my attempts to grow, to find creative independence and purpose, were at least partly in service of becoming more lovable.

the idea of ever having money for nice things was as irretrievably lost to us as our innocence.

“I live in the realm of the senses.” What an odd thing to say. Later that night, home in bed, I considered what he’d meant. The senses are pure experience, I decided; there is no sense for how things seem, which is what matters to the superficial.

He had a George Harrison smile, toothy and bashful, lopsided. Several times he kissed me through the smile.

She stood up from the deep chair and I noticed she straightened her legs a bit slowly. How awful, to get old. As if it wasn’t bad enough being young. At least our knees responded to our commands.

You want me to tell you what to do? Sure. How fun.

“I think what bothers me,” Hannah said, “is that we found our place, and then we immediately went and turned that place into basically another version of high school. Only we get to be the kings this time. Like, it’s a little…embarrassing?”

God it felt good to ignore this email, to be so bolstered by success that I could laugh off a musician and really mean it.

Honestly, how many different ways is it even possible for the same two people to break each other’s hearts?”

It was hard to know what kind of greeting would be appropriate for a history like ours.