Alone with You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

Masso found cooking to be a religious experience, Aldo considered it something best reserved for special occasions, or homesickness. Though, in his experience, most people considered religion precisely the same way.

If others were forced to wait for her time, she thought, then she would not have to owe so much of herself to them.

This is the problem with mortality, which is in fact a problem of time.

“A perfect circle, if you will,” she said, “because it is and it was and it will be, all at once.”

That I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.

They don’t tell you how close smoking is to setting yourself on fire.