1. The first time I came over, we each wrote a list of the boys we had kissed. Not the boys we had loved — that would be a shorter list. I sketched out their names, looping “a’s” and dotting “i’s,” digging through alcohol-bleared memories and darkened rooms with sticky floors. In a sunlit apartment, surrounded by books, I felt that I had found a kindred. We tucked the loose paper into spines, safe between another’s words. Long lost now, but not forgotten, we still share books but make lists of more important things.

2. Another was a dancer, you can see it in the point of her toes and the arc of her legs. There’s a deeply set grace in the way that she moves, chopping garlic in first position. She’s had a whole separate life, but in the version that I know her, she notices sad silences and wears long fur coats that bring her joy.

She often reassures me that I am doing fine, and I really do believe her. I wish that I could impress upon my friends that their lives are a marvel, their choices a marvel, their faith in me a marvel.

Sometimes even I don’t have the words.

I saw the first murmuration on my drive towards the water, and the second on my way home. Their small bodies churning in the air, I duck my head to catch sight of them as they fly overhead, and watch the breathe and give of their rapidly changing constellations. I know then that I am driving towards something good.

The Southbound pattern was more scattered, swarming, and swimming upwards towards the evening clouds. I am bittersweet, sad & happy to be going home.

Before they are buried, they stick out from the ground, all sharp edges. On the palm of my hand, they look like fragile butterflies — all antennae and orange, waxy wings. A shred of once-bright petals is just visible before the spike of the seed. I crush dried marigolds and scatter them, using my gloved hand to bury them, thoroughly but gently.

My brother cradles calendula seeds that resemble small white, curling centipedes. In this early hour, before the heat of the day has set and sleep is still a possibility, we are out here planting foraged seeds. I watch the way his hands skirt the soil, carving valleys with the edge of his wrist, pressing seeds beneath loam. I see so much of who he is in the smallest things he does, but is that because we come from the same threads? What are the stories we share without speaking?

It is raining harder than ever. Glassy sheets that scatter the nearby lights and sounds as we make our way under a clear umbrella bought for around $6 at a local newsstand. It lets the light in even under the weight of all this rain.

We are turning the corners on unfamiliar streets. With no landmarks to guide us or any real sense of direction beyond the goal of finding food, we come across our first real person. Another one to brave the storm. The figure appears; a young boy, facing the wall of the alleyway. He is coiled up with a bat in hand, shoulders tensed and ready to release. Before danger slips into these words, to put it simply, with no one around to see at all, he is playing a game of baseball.

I’ve always liked people who see the whole person.

The ones that remember how much you like a particular jacket, or send you a song that made them think of your cheekbones, or the way you eat your pasta with a spoon and not a fork, even if that choice is the definition of blasphemy.

Enter the apartment and go first to the bookshelf. The books will say a lot about a person; spines outward? Or are you looking at the cream/beige/whites of creased and handled pages? Move on from the titles, and look for talismans. Are they gathered from faraway places? Do they remind you of luck or do they make you feel sorrow? What is standing sentinel, and whom is it for?

Enter framed photographs in evidence, what is it they took the time to place? Photo strips are worth five points, a stray seashell another three. Are there postcards on the fridge? A “return to sender” stamp smudging across the reds, golds, and greens of the image. Now look at the magnets. What’s their story?

“Speak to me like mary ann moore of nanaimo and convince me to share your bed and spend the night, this half empty teacup tells me my fortune is not worth staying for. Rather, I become a sailor of the breeze and slowly melt away with an Irish goodbye into the shadows house plants throw onto the old wallpaper into the reflections their doubles cast in the panes of glass framing old posters of advertisements an art museum once had,”

“When she opened it, for the first time, there was only frustration. All these tiny, beautiful things, that didn’t mean a damn thing to her. That’s what the box would always be. She couldn’t ask about it, because asking meant opening up, in ways beyond the pale – fluttery, rapidly heavying thoughts. Scrunching her eyes, she leaned toward the cold wall, shifting her gaze toward the windowsill, watching as the sun gasped behind the nearby mountain, gleaning off the glass as it sank.”