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People in stories can read faces.
Look into others' eyes and tell what they are thinking.
He wishes that people could read his face.
He often walks staring at the ground, hands thrust in his pockets, eyes blank and hollow, bending over in an unhealthy way.
How can it be more obvious?
"He is seeing lines of code, snaking around in the sidewalk cracks,"
his friends say in wonder.
He imagines sitting in the lounge at 10pm at night, someone he once knew and never thought he would see again walking in, and him saying, as if continuing up a conversation with a close friend, "You know, I never thought this would happen to me."
I'm in love
I am gushing water
But the world is an infinite sponge
He is staring at a pair of braces,
devoid of meat {
}
But he can't pick up his fingers to type
the program he has already pseudocoded
in the last twenty pages of his twenty-fifth notebook
But his thoughts drift to
I wonder what her hand feels like
And he doesn't know why
But he takes out the pair of earphones, almost crushed in his backpack, never used
He goes on Pandora and he types in love
if life were a contest of effort {
he would pass with flying colors
} else if life were about intense longing {
how much you could screw your brain thinking about something
he would win
} but when life is a contest of happiness
{he flunks}
He doesn't waste time friending random people
That have nothing to offer him
Corollary:
He can't friend people who he has nothing to offer to
Either
She is a facebook glowbug
numFriends = 1000
She's typing in three different chat boxes
And her reflection in the screen in the too-bright sunlight
Is more beautiful than everything he's ever seen
And seems happier than he has ever been
He has only one plug
And it's USB.
throws CompatibilityException
He's typing in the console, spitting out the same lines of angry errors at him
His reflection, ugly, old, a face drooping, wilting from unachievable longing
How glad he would be willing to trade all of the A+'s he's ever gotten
just to experience the inexplicable happiness of long strings of conversing people flowing down the sidewalk on a Friday evening
he always wondered where they were going
that night
in life
Surrounded by a Friday evening crowd
Her choice of dress the pink of a blossoming phoenix
And he has no hold
He tears off his earphones
He runs down the stairs, out the dorm
They are already far away, heading into the party
He looks questioningly at the brothers hanging out besides the door
But they can't read faces either.
He tries to dance
His hands waving falteringly
His feet walking aimlessly
and she comes up {
This is how you move, she says, grasps his hand and raises them against the sky
Swings them around in a great arc
Pushes and pulls his arms until his feet are knocked into rhythm
He looks up at her face, her beautiful face in wonder
His eyes those of a city boy, suddenly landed in the wilderness, the million-star expanse of the night sky opened up before him for the first time
And he wonders, whether this can really be happening
Is the God's reward for all my hard work?
Or some impossible chain of causality?
} but she gently withdraws her fingers
He slows down and follows her leaving figure with his eyes
She wanders to the next awkward dancer
And he knows why she is a glowbug
And he knows he has no hold
The music is a crystalline trance
And he glides in it as if it were ballet,
Lifts his head up to the sky
No one hears him when he says quietly,
Why must I have tasted a crumb of fairy food
Only to be locked away from it forever?
The music is loud and blasting again
He gives himself up to it
And lets himself be
carried away by the tide {{{{{{
Holden Lee