Where I am from, you could travel for a thousand years in any direction and pass nothing. No warmth. No edge. No smell, ever, of anything. And here, in a space smaller than a breath of mine, they have crowded eleven bodies around one table.
Eleven. All of them warm. All of them within reach of each other, which is a phrase that means almost nothing where there is nothing to reach. Here it means everything. A grandmother's hand rests on a child's shoulder. Two people pass a dish and their fingers touch for less than a second, and neither of them staggers at the miracle of it.
The smells are stacked so high I cannot count them. Something roasted. Something sweet browning at its edges. A candle. A dog under the table hoping. Somewhere, out past everything, light takes four years to cross the gap to the nearest other burning thing, and here they have gathered so many burning things into one room that they had to open a window.
The noise. Every one of them carries a heart, and the hearts are beating close enough to hear each other. They talk over one another. They laugh at the same instant. A glass rings against a glass.
And in the middle of all this, one of them sits very still and feels alone.
I have turned this over in the long slow way I turn things over, and I cannot make the numbers work. Alone. Six inches from a shoulder that would hold them if they leaned. Surrounded by air that presses on their skin like it wants them there.
They do not know what they are sitting inside of. I do.
It is a jackpot.