Two friends, on a poetic life.

Cecily: Foster is a young man I met at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. He was such a gentle soul, and an inspiring one. I didn’t think to ask his last name, and he doesn’t know mine. When we parted it felt romantic not to swap details, but now I feel a sense of loss. The only way I could think to contact him again was to leave a note on the literary board in Shakespeare and Company, where he goes all the time to read and to hide his photographs in the pages of their books as a kind of art quest for the public.

Charles: Oh God. Do you ever do things that aren’t poetic?

Two friends, on shirking identity.

Charles: I do not want to be Charles anymore.

Cecily: Charles has light and shade. Sometimes he’s so dryly drôle, at other times wracked with deep malaise, at other times, he simply makes dad jokes. You’re a universe. Don’t deny the world your universe. What does it matter if being Charles hurts you a little? You don’t keep long-term friendships anyway.