Recently, Helene’s had thoughts on love and strangers.
Is love something to explain? Does it sound worse when you try? Can a stranger be cradled to your body? And without moving or speaking, can you learn to love it? Are strangers the problem? There’s too many of them.
Helene wonders whether love is like time, a line of strangers, not there to move but advance you. She, so tired and hungry, that she wants to fall asleep in an explosion of red, a bud wide as a jaw, his tongue soft as velvet as lush as petal, their love, a flower, both beauty and not quite that long living. It’s like the jungle air filled with butterflies. The difference between maybe and absolutely, a carnation and real life. She’s had several and wants more, and then just that one. Cole, this is how she thinks, Helene, Helene, when she wakes, when alone.
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