She tries to explain it again, waving her hands back and forth because the person talking to her has again missed the point. And he won't shut up. No, no, no, the fingers wave. You've got it all wrong.

It's not as cliche as the internet, or even this one site. She thinks of JoBeth Williams in the movie Poltergeist trying to explain how it felt to be moved across the kitchen floor by an unseen, spiritual force. There's this tickle in your stomach and it starts to pull you, the tickling pulls you.

He stands and leans against the kitchen cabinets, tapping the lower door with his heel, scuffing the white. His forearms are revealed under rolled up seersucker blue with tiny stripes. His brows and shoulders shrug in unison.

"I think you are reading too much into all that. I mean, it's not like they live here, not like they're real."

"They were real enough for me."

And so she's back at the screen again, and one by one they light up, like the skyline at dusk. She feels like a satellite in love with the stars, in love with being connected.

There are tentacles that thread into your heart, other people tangled up in you with their lifelines, their pulses pressing in on all sides. This is not always love, it is not always always, but it is real, or real enough, to be felt.

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