When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.

Only humans can cry tears.

They learned to hate her unknowability, her untouchability, the collage of her.

Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?

I wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.

She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.