We thought we were all the same. It’s something no one talks about, really: Yours is yours and mine is mine. Let’s draw pictures. Okay. A crunching tear from a notebook, reach for a pen; heads down and giggles. We’re too old for this. Fold and toss and shuffle. We peel the paper apart and know the Who’s Who. “Paper airplanes!” Why not? Over Ballston, from a towering balcony, we glided. In them—in us—just paper, just drawings, labeled. Block print: THIS IS MY VAGINA. Laughed as the wind took them away into traffic and down the street.

Sometimes it all comes back and you remember the howling, freight-train winds. Will this house make it: Brick and thick wood siding. Still standing.

They say, sometimes, that to write—and make it—that you have to write for the movies. This never happens in real life. Relationships full of hyperbole and true stories; we all wish we were the same. He even laughed at my jokes.

A man’s voice floats through the stiff air; smooth and honest, Damon’s song makes everything just fade away. He makes a simple request: Live nearer.

There’s a phone call and then a smile. A knock on the door and the sound of feet against carpet.

The news rolls in like thunder and you don’t quite know how to understand it. His stories feel oddly familiar; reminders of a past life full of questions and indecency. People who’s phone numbers you’ve lost and stories that beg not to be repeated. An unknown number flashes, you answer and someone uses an old nickname and it all comes back. We are the same. We never changed.

The wind picks up and the windows squeal and rattle. A draft makes the down comforter the best idea ever. Singing along to Nick Drake, the night seems complete.