Curate, connect, and discover
Harrow the Ninth, chapters 48 and 49:
If Gideon had been there—no, if Gideon had been there, Harrow still couldn’t have hoped for a running commentary. Griddle didn’t know how to do running commentary. She would suck her breath through her teeth, or mutter in ecstasy words that meant nothing to anyone who wasn’t her, things like, “right foot,” in tones that suggested that if she died on the spot, that right foot would have somehow been the apex of her existence. Nor could she ever explain a fight after the fact in terms that Harrow could understand. But if her cavalier had been there, Harrow was fairly sure that she would have sucked her molars out of their sockets from sheer intensity of feeling.
~
It was your curt, aggravated handwriting, curter and more aggravated than ever, like you’d written it in a hurry. I’d gotten so many letters in that handwriting, calling me names or bossing me around. You’d touched that letter, and I—you know it was killing me twice that you weren’t there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn’t even hear your damn voice?
tonight’s breakdown theme: soft mutual yearning for small things about each other that no one else could appreciate