Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

he was uncertain if the company of other people, which just a short time ago had seemed somehow necessary, was something he could bear—when

“I think we’re always clenched,” Miller said after a minute, and he squeezed Wallace’s fingers. “I think we’re always tight until we get what we really want, and maybe even then, too. Who knows?”

And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.’”

Some white people were out front smoking. He felt their eyes follow him up the street.

“My mom died, and I thought, Oh shit, oh shit. Because I had spent so long hating her, resenting her, and then she was suddenly facing this thing she couldn’t beat, and I just, I really felt for her.”

In the end, it doesn’t matter who did this. In the end, none of it matters. Back to work, then.