She told me that everyone had stories drifting around inside their heads, but that the stories are only any good if they stay there. I called bull on it and she laughed, long and hard, her shoulders convulsing so that her shirt sleeves rose up enough so I could see what her tattoo was. It was a ring of small children with hands joined together to form a circle around her bicep. We didn’t say anything else that night as we sat on the roof of her apartment building and watched the empty city below us turn darker and more wild as the sun went down.

I wondered if I should have written something about the experience, but who would have been around to read it.