My mind rushed through images of him, then images of my ex-boyfriend Elias, then all the other boys I had known and lost, their faces appearing and then falling back into the crowd. They all had something in common, but I hadn’t made the connection until now, and the connection brought things into focus, made things feel more real, set up a chain of threat and consequence in my mind. It felt dangerous to admit it, as though the commonality was a sort of curse, a brokenness in them, in us, but I knew the brokenness was in the world instead.
