Everywhere else I go, you could travel for a hundred thousand years and never once brush against anything warm. Here, a warm thing is leaning on another warm thing on a couch, and neither of them will move all night.
Count it with me. In a body of air no wider than a held breath, there are nine of them. Nine hearts, all beating, all inside the reach of a single outstretched arm. The smell of spilled beer sits on top of the smell of somebody's perfume, which sits on top of the smell of the pizza going cold in the box, three separate happenings stacked in the same small volume, and none of them had to cross a single light-year to arrive.
The music is a pressure. It touches the walls, the walls touch the people, the people touch each other, elbow to shoulder to knee, and the pressure comes back changed. Sound, out where I am, has nothing to push against and so does not exist. In this kitchen it will not stop existing.
It fills every gap between every body, and there are almost no gaps.
One of them is standing by the counter, though, at the crowded edge, holding a red cup, and has gone quiet. I lean close to understand. She feels far from them. Far. I do the arithmetic three times. There is a person eleven inches to her left and another warm breathing person against her back, and she has decided this is a distance.
I would give everything I am, which is nothing, which is most of it, to be eleven inches from anything.
She is standing in the middle of the jackpot. She won.
She won and does not know.