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But Signy is not to be feared. She uses this skill to help.

Yes. Me, and many others.

What is Signy?

You know this. A builder of medicine. A human. A woman.

You feel me incorrectly. What is Signy, to you?

I don’t need the alarm to wake up. I’ve been buzzing for hours, because I’m going to the shop today. The pills—yes, the pills are important, but that’s not why I’m taking a shower or brushing my teeth very carefully or worrying if maybe I put too much stuff in my hair. The world is vibrant. My blood is carbonated. Time careens and crawls, and I am eager and I am terrified and I am hopeful and I am doubting and I am the tallest mountain in the clearest sky and I am so, so fragile, please don’t hurt me if I let myself slip all the way and hand you my entirety. I want to untangle everything that makes her. I want to talk and talk and talk. I want to know and be known. I want to know what she had for lunch, what she’s scared of, if she likes my jokes, if old movies and good poems make her cry, too. And if we are standing side by side, I want to know if we see the same thing or if she sees something else, and if it’s something else, I want to know everything about it, please, everything, everything. I want to feel the world through her.

There is something more.

You will not understand.

Show me anyway.

Breath. Lips. Hands. Cunt. Wet and pleading at the thought of hers. I run my fingers down myself and I wonder what she likes. I want to learn her. I want to please. I want to kneel down, hold fast, laugh and tumble and drown. I want to make something beautiful with her. I want to know and be known.

I do not understand these things.

I know.

This is like Anna.

Yes. And no. But yes, broadly.

And Valerie and Cass.

Yes.

But Signy feels nothing like them.

No.

And Anna does not feel like Valerie. Valerie does not feel like Cass.

No. They are all different people. It is never the same twice.

Signy is becoming this, to you.

Yes.

It is a sharing. Like you and I.

No. Yes. Sort of. Never. Well, sometimes. It’s close enough.

It hurt you, when Anna and Valerie and Cass became something else again.

Tissues heaped by my pillow. Twig bringing a cheap pack of cupcakes and a bad bottle of whiskey and saying all the wrong things while I soak her shirt with my face. Missed alarms. Missed breakfast. Scum in the shower drain. An endless rotation of pop songs for the situationally depressed. Stupid stupid stupid, I am always so stupid. Awkward. Ugly. Smoking in a bar I don’t even like in the most self-indulgent way possible—god, look at you, licking your wounds. Pathetic. It’s all her fault. It’s all my fault. How could she? How could I? Maybe it’s no one’s fault. Maybe this is just how people are. Maybe the most constant thing about us is how dedicated we are to fucking things up. Oh. Oh, I woke up one day and the scab fell off and there isn’t even much of a scar. It’s nothing, now. So strange, to think of it being something, before. There isn’t anything special about this healing. This has happened billions of times to billions of people. But maybe she and I were special, once. Maybe for a moment, we were good.

Is this shape of love worth this shape of pain?

Yes.

You are also worth the pain.

So are you.