She wanders down thrift store aisles. Her fingers tip-toe across the shoulders of faded reds to faded pinks. Everything stiff with the soap of second lives. She searches the well-washed rainbow for something she would know. Not this halter-top with the sequined flowers or that v-neck t-shirt designed to meet (just barely) the waist of jeans from ten years ago, but somewhere further down this row or the next or the one at the very end.

The misshapen cottons and impermeable polyesters whisper stories. I was once, they murmur, stretched against the breasts of a young woman who danced sweat through me and pulled laughter into my seams. She tingled when her partner touched the small of her back and leaned into the rhythm cupped in his palm.

She doesn’t believe half the tales of boardrooms and backrooms and bedrooms rustling from hook to hanger. This blouse was purchased for one half-hearted job interview and never worn again. This jacket was bought on sale and never fit quite right. These sneakers were worn long and often, but couldn’t be thrown out and now were not allowed to die. They haven’t fooled her once in all the weeks she has been combing these forlorn castaways.

She sighs. Her gaze drifts until the colours blur and blend into background. It isn’t here. Again. Nowhere in the carefully sorted corals and yellows and greens. She jerks the hangers back and back and back and back. Her frustration shrieks along the racks.

In fifteen minutes, she will be finished her meal. She will stand up and speak to the man who has been staring at her across the table. She will answer the last of the questions he has been avoiding asking all evening. She can hear question marks crackling like AM radio reception fuzzing in a thunderstorm. She is certain he has never once listened to AM radio, so she will not use the analogy when she delivers the sentences she is sculpting. He won’t understand anyway. Or he will pretend he doesn’t understand to perhaps elicit an understanding hand on his arm. Perhaps she will place a condescending kiss on his cheek. Though her touch, any touch, will change the meaning of her words in ways she both does and doesn’t intend. Until then, she is wondering why she ordered coffee with her dessert instead of sharing a pot of tea.

Nicosia Falls was born in the mid-1970s. The exact date was not documented for irreligious reasons. She had an unremarkable education because she refused to answer any true/false sections on exams, stating that the truth or falsity of a statement could not be determined in a non-philosophical setting. Her parents, teachers, and friends rolled their eyes a lot. At the age of 23, she met several men she could have married, but a series of incidents led her to northwestern Manitoba, where she lost touch with all of them. She decided to study land formations of the Canadian Shield without any formal training in geology.