Six. You have the soul of a baby bird. She has told him everything about herself. She has spilled secrets even her best friends know nothing of, simply because he somehow knew to ask. He has seen into the ugliest compartments of her brain, and his response is to tell her that she has the soul of a baby bird. She wonders what it must be like inside the ugliest compartments of his brain. She wonders how he has disarmed and dissected her so completely. How has he caused her world to melt into colors she never thought she would see again? She imagines their first meeting not saying a word, just looking into his eyes and shyly reaching up to kiss him. Or would he be much taller than her? She isn’t sure. In photos he has big ears. She imagines the tickle of her tongue on his ear. How his eyes might roll back into his head as she does this. He would understand what it meant to her. She would ask him the right questions and tell him the right answers without having to speak. She imagines he belongs to her, and her thoughts belong to him. All of these things she imagines. She has constructed him inside her mind. He lives there exclusively, and the only truth she sees is the truth he chooses to give her, and from that pile she sorts out what she chooses to believe. The same is true of his view of her. Perhaps he conjured her from the ugliest compartments of his own brain. Perhaps she never had a baby bird soul at all. ***