Before long: Empires and expansions and the buried pulse of cause and consequence making its rounds.

For now, she does not know that she is The Red Smile, does not see beyond the cooling tea, the plastic carnations on the table, the thought of a dash across continents itching her feet.

The radio says, Goodbye and Hello. A song has passed into the language she knows, but it passes odd and scampering, like a broken horse.

She might never know that she’s The Red Smile, the one with a genius for repetition, the one who, even blindfolded, finds the lungs of the city. We hold this moment, as much as we can grasp.

Her fingers half-curled around the white cup, she is thinking of her daddy, of the half-finished painting, of freckled flesh in other countries, of tiny fishing boats, and of the angles of flowers underwater. Here goes, she thinks, here goes. Time is ridiculous.

We must be pen pals, recognizing each other by distance, the squirm on our tongues or the prickles on our phantom limbs. We have so much energy and many more cities than that.

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