Focus on one star.
Hold your gaze.
And watch as the darkness spreads and consumes everything around it, until even that one star disappears from your view.
Hundreds of miles from any place that could be called home.
Skin that reeks of the debauchery of Mardis Gras.
Half-drained scotch on the rocks.
This is what it means to sing the blues.
It’s when you’re in a crowd that you feel the loneliest.
Bright lights. Music in a language you don’t know. Strangers surrounding you on all sides, each of them with their own lives, their own history. How can you possibly know it all? How can you possibly embrace each of them, know them, these people who surround you and with whom you share a common experience, these people you will never see again?
Loneliness.
The warmth of a stranger’s touch such a cherished gift.
And it’s just like in the movies—you did end up getting the girl at the end, except it was never about her, was it?
You were never looking for a girl.
You were looking for love.
It was, she decided as she watched the flames swirl in the open air, the best possible outcome.
Midnight finds her with sand between her toes and the smell of brine woven into her hair.
Somewhere, deep in the rolling plains of Missouri, a lone raindrop fell.