Back then they didn’t speak, and each of them shared so much they never saw - not least a stocky, well built morality that at first glance seemed confusing, devoid of logic… In reality, it was only intricate; woven and worked on, imbued with all the fluids a human body will let loose when it’s really, truly pushed. Hers was meticulous and considered; the best way to sleep at night, but he was constantly revolving and evolving around the idea that everything is ridiculous; if you can laugh at something you should and if you can’t laugh at it you’ll have to hate it.

“You’re so easy on me,” I said to him once, “On everyone. They all talk like that’s not the case, but you know, in practice…”

He laughed, of course, but eventually stopped and said, “You’ve got to… You know, you have to fix it to a level, it’s like always filling a sink with water, always letting the water out, keeping it steady. And you do that because otherwise something in you gets messed up, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a survival instinct. Who can function with that much guilt? I know I can’t.”

I shook my head, saying, “That’s not all of it though, it comes from somewhere else.”

He shrugged, “Maybe. Maybe not, it doesn’t matter. If you mess another person up you mess yourself up, what you meant doesn’t matter, it still happened… Where it comes from never matters.”