( she hums wistfully like it's a pipe dream, something sweet because of it's inability to be touched, and her eyes drift off like she's painting herself somewhere else while her body remained rooted there. she's had time in that quiet life, nothing but boundless trees surrounding her and dirt roads luring you to the foot of the mountains. she can still hear her brother's words, vining tightly about her chest, her throat, pressing tongue to the roof of her mouth: you've gotta get out of here, karen. she'd had the quiet, but it's not so welcoming to her anymore, not since she'd left it with a falsified police report, that last glimpse she'd gotten before they'd gone over the rail.

she can't get that back, can't take anything back. but it doesn't keep her from fruitlessly wishing for it just the same. )

Put a garden back there, build some little shed over the summer that just fills and fills with shit you don't really need, but it all makes you feel like you've made it, somehow.

( mindlessly she's giving a slow twirl of her glass, looking down at the way those honey-comb hues reflect against one another, like the sticky summers of vermont. )

You know, back then I always wanted to be somewhere else. That 'elsewhere' just happened to end up here. It doesn't really give you a choice; to love it. Even if you find out you don't want to, you can't take it back. You're already here.

( she finds his gaze across that island and for a long pause, she doesn't say anything. she sees new york in him. it's teeth, its summers, its winters. the distance between them suddenly burns with a vastness none to her liking. ) All those people and it still has a way of making you feel alone.