striking raze the first time they met it was in the park that poked out of the ground between the high school and the street he lived on. she asked one_word questions that weren't questions. he gave long answers that didn't answer anything she seemed to want to know. the red that rose from her skin put the idea in his head that they might come to love each other, might arrive at love, might trip over it the way you become accidental confidante to a talkative drunk in a bar on the night you least want to listen. not that it would be easy, because when is love ever easy unless it's playing possum? it was the wrong idea. there would be no love. only the faintest of friendships. the second and last time they met, it was at his house, a different house on a different street, without a park or a school nearby to hint at other possible lives. she gave him some drawings no one else wanted. he told her some history she asked about. she took a picture of him holding a piece of that history. she sat at his drums and mimed striking them but did not play. she made a sound with her mouth to take the place of the sound she might make with her hands, quiet enough that it was almost nothing, loud enough that it became a soft something, a sort of hissing, a child's approximation of a train or a call a bird would learn to make if born without a voice. when he thought of her later, in the distance between what never could have been and all the nothing that there was, the sound came attached to the thoughts like a theme song denied words or melody, the soft whimper of something waiting to be struck. 131202 what's it to you? who go blather from