You are a man. You were twenty-four once, day gave way to night, and you are now twenty-eight. You'll turn over another year in just a couple weeks. There's a girl you know in certain ways. You don't remember where you met. You don't remember what you talked about. One day you told her she was pretty and that you wanted to kiss her. Three years later you did. You held her down in the back of your car and you felt remorse afterwards. Did that really happen? You apologised. She said it was okay. You said you loved her. You do. She has hands that feel too small to hold. She paints her fingernails, peels the polish off again when she's too bored and hot. She cuts her hair again and again. Twice now she's come home without any hair. You only know about the first time. You haven't seen her in a while. You drive her around in a black car late at night, like Death freewheeling over the horizon. You see her from the corner of your eye. You don't know if she's really all that beautiful. But there's something. And something means a lot. Her eyes glaze over when she talks, like she forgets to listen. She's sad, you know this, but she laughs, and she means it. The world opens up and there is a hole in the middle and you are right there, right in the centre of it all, and her teeth are twisted, but she won't pay to have them fixed because she's saving it all for the day you stop joking and you take her with you.