Twos.

Lately, it seems like there is no one on the streets alone at night. To be honest, it has me unsettled. Human beings used to come in ones, not in matched sets like place settings or, in dire situations, like pedigreed dogs and their eerily resemblant owners. Now, they come paired, locked together at the palms like Siamese Twins. Everywhere I go now, I see double.

There's a couple that seems to always be buying Vienna sausage at my bodega, and this couple, they have the most beautiful hair. Their faces leave something to be desired--dental hygeine, basic symmetry--but their hair is the kind that I imagine alopecian billionaires vie for. I wonder if it's how they found eachother, as if love were so much more obvious than how I've always pictured it, a constant sonar sent out into a helplessly immense ocean. Now, when I see eight year olds on matched bicycles, and I get immediately jealous. I see coy men in cocktail dresses whispering to eachother in a sunned alleyway, their faces mirrored jacks of hearts, and by then I cannot help it. I want to put on a man's clothes and stand by my favorite lake and sing and sing my favorite songs until you come, perfect you, a delayed echo of my own voice.