“He says no, he’s never been to Philadelphia but doesn’t sound afraid of it or the shape she can’t get rid of that it makes in her, how it sharpens her remarks and pulls down the sides of her mouth, and she grows more tired because of what she’ll have to explain maybe even the Very Big Thing she’s only told her mother and Toni—she wishes she could call Toni now—he says, he’d like to hear about it if she feels like sharing and she says, it would take decades, then begins with the tails of the show-off betta fish and the soft green nets but these don’t make sense unless she tells him about her mother and the Flying Man and how she’s never experienced a new life level without pain, some brutal shedding, and she thinks, Oh no, she thinks, All for the want of a grilled cheese! which doesn’t apply but is the kind of logic one exhibits when finding oneself on the shaky-glittery brink of something that’s probably going to fuck her up in a way that if humanity or entropy or Andromeda is kind will turn out to be important, will at least not hurt, at least, not much, will maybe bridge the distance between her and everything, between her and herself, and he says green is big terrain, you know, about the soft green nets, so what color—frog or lentil or emerald or lima bean or lily pad or pine needle or grass?” LoveHuman Nature Author:Marie-Helen Bertino