Ich lauschte einfach der Musik, atmete den Tag ein und erinnerte mich. Daran, wie es war, durch die Nachbarschaft zu schlendern und die Häuser und Gärten und bunten Bäume zu betrachten, und man gar nicht mehr brauchte.

Sometimes he looks at his arms and is filled with a self-hatred so fiery that he can barely breathe: much of what his body has become has been beyond his control, but his arms have been all his doing, and he can only blame himself. When he had begun cutting himself, he cut on his legs—just the calves—and before he learned to be organized about how he applied them, he swiped the blade across the skin in haphazard strokes, so it looked as if he had been scratched by a crosshatch of grasses. No one ever noticed—no one ever looks at a person’s calves.

He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling.

“I’m lonely,” he says aloud, and the silence of the apartment absorbs the words like blood soaking into cotton.