Jaime

"Chill here with friends. Bring a board game. And a tow truck, a few snow plows, and OPP."

"Students so fresh and so clean cling to textbooks wrapped in cellophane so new and so old looking to a future so certain so unsure only assured that they'll have a place afterwards so we say so we say"

"A bed better than my own at home. A space better designed. People to carry luggage and with my computer I can work anywhere, any here. The hotel is my shell, one I will discard upon better things."

"How many bowls of noodles have been served here? How many stomachs warmed? Around us the sounds of Vietnamese, always in the same tone, never betraying. Whole lives told in a beef broth. Six dollars."

"The Lakeview is dependable, always open. If only I could say that about the other fractions of my life. We sit at a booth close to the window, facing each other. So close, yet in different directions."

"Nature and optical illusions. Literature and metaphors. What if what we say isn't true in a physical sense, but real in another? I'm dreaming of this place, of you on this bench, quietly, waiting."