┌ PREFACE ┘

❝a dream of your body in the morning, twisted around the light like a broken sycamore tree that i'm not allowed to forget. maybe it's a penance, a punishment because i didn't mean it when i told you to leave. sometimes i say things just to know that i can still speak out loud, that my mouth's still there, that i didn't rub it off while i was sleeping. maybe the words are supposed to mean something. they should matter, you say to me, and i'm not listening because i know they do and i don't want to hear it aloud, see it hanging vulnerable, split open in the air between us. and the truth is this, i'm talking circles and you're talking circles and everything means everything and nothing means nothing, and that's the ways it's supposed to be and we just can't bear it — so we take the dreams and we hold them gently like little absolutions.❞

- EMILY PALERMO