It's never quite right, he said, the way people look, the way the music sounds, the way the words are written. It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are taught, all the loves we chase, all the d**hs we die, all the lives we live, they are never quite right, they are hardly close to right, these lives we live one after the other, piled there as history, the waste of the species, the crushing of the light and the way, it's not quite right, it's hardly right at all he said. don't I know it? I answered. I walked away from the mirror. it was morning, it was afternoon, it was night nothing changed it was locked in place. something flashed, something broke, something remained. I walked down the stairway and into it.