When he understands, as few others do, something of his home that is funny, or sad, or tragic, or cruel, or beautiful, or true, he knows he must do so as a stranger.

between the disfigurement and the muzzle, it's nearly impossible to catch what she's saying. Always, though, while tripping and stumbling to the music, she looks out into her audience and tells the story about her mother. Most people laugh and yell for her to lift her skirts, but every so often she'll spot someone weeping and swear they can understand her every word.

Isolation, for him, had become a basic sine qua non for existence and loneliness, his sole companion like a perfectly faithful twin. He was someone for whom even happiness would cry for, mourning the death of his sentiments and murdering the existence of his soul.

When I Was Cruel.

Who would have listened to his tales of woe when his love was the flickering lamp over his own decaying tomb?

Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her.