Ultimately, you only deserve what you can steal.

“I’m good with dates,” he said, jamming the burrito into his mouth, as if that was something to be proud of.

There’s Peter, and I mean, his life is beautiful, I mean he’s dating Rebecca and she’s tall and beautiful, way taller than him, and she wears those amazing blue Fluevog pumps – but Peter, he owns a Ferrari, and that’s pretty amazing, and Rebecca’s mom, she lives in Fiji, and her sister is a falconer, so there’s that…

He was: regularly torn apart by desire. He was: shredded and spending too much time feeling awful inside. He didn’t: have the strength for this. No, wait, cancel the full stop, leaving it laying where you dropped it — he does have the strength for this, like the toughest 15-year-old in the world, like the ice on Lake Ontario freezing out to the point. Skate for the horizon.

A song about the weather, a song about how good it feels to face the fiction.

The pattern is full.