We haven’t seen each other in weeks. We haven’t ever seen each other without layers of material and HUD light over our faces, but we have laughed together. Just us. Now, we bump into each other and pretend we can’t see the red flashing alarms. You ask what I’ve been doing with myself, as if we have all the time we need to feel like human beings. I tell you about my art, as if I drew anything more than half a cat one afternoon. I want to tell you how much I’ve been thinking about you, but it seems too much, even though the alarms are persistent, and the timing for declarations is growing increasingly cliché. You tell me about two books you’ve read since we saw each other, one of which I recommended, and I’m glad you liked it. We’re talking about normal things that normal people do. We are very normal. There is nothing wrong. I want to laugh with you again, but I can’t think of anything funny to say. I laugh anyway, because we’re together and we might never be again. You laugh, too, because you get it.
K.A. Honeywell lives in the Pacific Northwest and wrote a novel called Damn Wilds. She has a website at kahoneywell.com and can be found on Twitter @kahoneywell.