Free Where You End by Anna Pellicioli

and fall like that. They don’t fill the whole room and take over your insides. They just stand still and sometimes you have to squint to really see them. This was more like swimming. When the first song was over, I couldn’t wait for the next one, but I also knew it would never feel like that again. I’ll never forget that first song.
    After the band left the stage, I looked at Elliot for the first time in hours, and he looked so incredibly happy, and I wanted every single bit of him. I wanted to live in the middle of those waves, to have something to scream about, to really understand what made that man write songs.
    When we got on the Metro, our ears were still ringing, and we had to shout to hear each other. People were looking at us. I remember thinking everybody else looked tired. Elliot kept shaking his head and talking about how great it was, how it was so much better live than on the record. He leaned over and spoke in my ear, so I would hear him. He explained that music was like a knife for him, something that cut through everything. Then he sat back up, and that’s when I took the picture.
    It’s of Elliot’s face after the show, but it’s about me. It’s about the way I was looking at him and trying to understand him.
    I drop the print on the floor and try to fall asleep. It ’s late. It’s been a long day. I kick the music off the bed, rearrange the blanket and read a poem from Paloma’s book. Nothing helps. Fuck it. Do what you need to, Miriam.
    Minutes later, I’m on the bike, crossing the city in the middle of the night, going much farther than I usually go. The hills are tough and gradual, but I’m so mad I can’t even feel it. I start on the side of the street and end up in the middle, since no one is there to honk or run me over. It’s a little scary, but mostly it’s nice to be alone.
    It’s hard to explain, especially in the middle of the night after a really long day, but I think I get what Elliot meant when he said music was his knife. So, there’s life, right? There’s breakfast, and your parents, and the landscape outside the bus window, and your friends, and the guy you buy your coffee from, and your house, with your room, and your things, and your street outside your window.
    Let’s say you even have love, maybe sex, definitely fear. You’re cruising—with your fair share of surprises and interruptions, but you’re still cruising. Even when you get hurt, or when you are totally triumphant, you are sort of cruising, because the story is rolling, and you’re in the middle of it, and it still makes sense. You’re on the surface of your life. You are moving.
    But sometimes, some days, some moments, something different happens. It doesn’t have to be big. In fact, most of the time, it’s not. Most of the time, it’s a lady with a red coat who’s crossing the street, and you can’t take your eyes off of her. Or your mom undoes her hair, and it makes you want to cry. Or a dog runs toward you at full speed and you can’t move, and you think he’s going to rip into you, but you just stand still and he stops right in front of your legs.
    Those moments are the knife. You don’t know why, but things feel so clear and pure and real, you know it must mean something big, but you don’t know what. Actually, when you try to figure it out, everything recedes and gets foggy, and you start moving again. That’s why you need a knife. Once in a while, we all need to cut through the layers and access that place. Even if it means riding your bike across the nation’s capital in the middle of the night to take a picture of a stranger’s house.
    Paloma’s street is off a main road in Columbia Heights, where the buses have already stopped running for the night. There are only a few tired men coming home, maybe from work, walking under those bright store lights that make