No lover was spared the loneliness, no friend was granted a goodbye, no family was sent a note when Bruno packed everything away into his fading orange pick up truck and drove all the way up to Maine.

Songs that crackled out sadder than a bruised peach turned his soul into clay and bunched up inside him, adding their feelings to his and shaped him just like everything did.
Jumbled up, Bruno would take no more shape from his old Louisiana life.

He was thinking that-

A call on his cell.
“Jack,” he croaked, wary of this one lover that had mattered a little more than the rest. “Don’t speak. I’m gone. Gonna see a doctor, gonna get right. Things was gettin’ bad, I was feelin’ real dark,” he cleared his throat. “You be good, you hear?”

-that he had to change his shape on the inside, that he had to take charge of everything that went in him. What are we but all we inhale?

He thought that he was a little curdled. He was thinking he wanted to be Greek yogurt, sour and full of bacteria and pure as all hell.