Heaven

Just seeing you, though, I feel, I dunno, happamine.”

Why people don’t print money when they’re broke.

Kojima had told me over and over that everything happens for a reason. Every time we met, her presence assured me that together, we were strong enough to overcome this. She wrote me letters.

the sameness didn’t hit me in an achy way, like with nostalgia, or give me an uncanny feeling of having done this all before, like déjà vu.

It’s Heaven, the place I want to show you.

They kicked me in the knees and thighs, but never hit the same place twice. One of them booted me in the chest, like he was checking to see how soft I was. They pushed me, threw me into a wall. I staggered and crashed into a desk. Happens all the time, I told myself. It’s nothing. It happens. I waited for it to end.

Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.

“When these things happen, people like to gossip.”

“I know.”

“But you’re the only one I’m listening to.”

“I know.”

“You can say anything. Or nothing, if that’s what you want to do.”

But I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.

If anything has meaning, everything does. And if nothing has meaning, nothing does.