(how it is with people)

1. I feel it all the time with some people, betrayed by the harmless ticks of their bodies: how they slouched their fine shoulders, how instead of looking up at you they scan your face and then look away, how the last sentence of their words come out clipped and chased by breath and silence. You hit a glass ceiling, your friendship peaks, and you encounter an invisible barrier, irresolute. It exists with some people, with most people, the way you structure a relationship against the mast of their expectations.
2. You wanted to write him a letter and now you're terrified because words don't matter where he lives and you have nothing. When he reads this, he will scan the (half) page. Hooded eyes, the same lips as yours turned down, unimpressed, and his barren silence is the only answer and even then--unlike you--he won't ask what it means. He will, simply, and--like you--without much forethought face you with the gravity and earnestness of his cramped handwriting. Tight, knotty curlicues like strangled hands refusing to let go. His face will register nothing. He hasn't heard a word.