Sitting outside the cafe with the smokers and going over in his mind, once again, the greeting he had practiced, the greeting he had actually written on paper and memorized, the greeting he had determined to be casual and non-threatening and non-creepy, he watched over the top the book he was pretending to read as she walked past him, like she had every day for more than a year, and got into her car. As she drove away his eyes hovered on the spot where her car had been until, losing energy while the back of his throat tightened with disappointment, his eyes sank slowly down to the words on the book in front of his face and refocused on their strangeness. It took him a few confused seconds to realize that the letters were not the script of some unknown foreign language, they were just upside-down.
"As long as we breathe we draw in both regret and joy," said the moth on the window behind his head, trying to comfort him. Unfortunately, he didn't speak moth.
Hello, friends.
Later. Love.
