We are sitting at the dead end of our suburban town and are pouring roofing tiles into each other’s wineglasses. My arm hurts from throwing them, and I can see it in your face: you feel the same. Slowly, you let red and sharp edges drown in my glass and grow more confident with time. I would like to tell you that you will not be able to shatter it. Not today. But that you will have to find out on your own. In return, I throw my white bricks into your vessel. Look you in the eyes. You don’t even flinch. You hold it in front of your face. Pour it down without thinking twice. 

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On this evening nothing can hold any meaning, as we are sitting in a comet’s crater, hard-shelled by the heat. Sealed off from outside movement. They are too far away and are walking too fast. They cannot touch us. But actually, I am too soft right now, and so are you. 

It had started with Pipo. It rather started right before Pipo, but he got stuck in my head. 

Pipo was missing – that’s what I told you on the phone. 

Before that I talked about my plate tectonics. I talked about my shifting foundations that suddenly collapsed. About the new sky that opened up, and about me not knowing what it would bring along. I tripped over my sentences, tripped over unknown grounds, and tried to knot ladders in the process. Tried to inch along prefabricated phrases.  

I had trained for this – to break bad news. But rule number one is not on the phone and you were too far away and I couldn’t wait till next day.  

You said, you did not understand what it meant at first. 

I thought I was blunt with you. 

Before that I had seen my face in the bathroom mirror. I had already been waiting at the elevator doors and had turned back once more. Even though my eyes were on the run I was met with hundreds of kindred looks, mostly from past days, some from future ones. This was one of those moments where you have to make a decision. I decided to survive the next few minutes and burst open. 

It was not me that talked to you on the phone, but the part that was a half-step to my left. There was a tightly woven calmness, one small thought after another. The fragment to my left knew that I was in crisis. It drafted plans, while I could not stop walking. Integrated past scripts, almost like a surreal game, an exceptionally difficult brain teaser. 

Below that were waves colored a muted green. They formed a vortex that, through the new holes in my foundations, found its way to me. My eyes become blurry with their waters. It pulled on my body, but I was standing a half-step to my left most of the time. I stumbled, nonetheless. And even though the malignant tumor grew out of my first sentence, it took some time to reach you.  

The information had bottled itself up in my head. It arranged itself and ran out of the clogged brain coils. Tumbled over, demanded to be known by you, by many.  

The fragment to my left talked rather flatly about someone else. 

We talked about Pipo, the domesticated pigeon. I had seen the homemade poster on a gate, walking past. Pipo was a fitting name for a domesticated pigeon, we agreed on that. 

The fragment to my left made me keep walking. 

The fragment to my right had already started to change. 

I handed over everything I knew. We made jokes about my funeral. The vortex of realization made me feel death for a few seconds and then again, I was a half-step to my left. 

I told you I won’t shatter. 

I’m only fragmented. 

The dissociation happened in an instance; the realizations are many. 

We are sitting in a comet’s crater, at the dead-end of our suburban community, and are throwing bricks into wineglasses. They will not crack today. It’s our very own demonstration to each other. Most of my fragments are in agreement and after our glasses are still filled and unbroken, the two of us also are. 

I can hold this. 

I get up and start to walk to the edge of the crater. The fragment to my left says that this is important. I would like to stay in this moment with you, without tomorrow. Only us two and our too-heavy, overflowing glasses. But bricks that have been thrown also need to be digested, says one of my fragments. And I need to find the next space to feel. 

I can hold this. 

I climb out of the crater; you secure me, and I pull you out after. We look back at the impact site and clink our glasses one more time. The chunks leave a sour taste behind. Then, we leave ourselves behind. The fragment to my left says it is important now to be really soft. Hard things break under forces like these. Then I would have to search for my parts first. Better to have them with me from the start. 

I can hold this. 

And I start walking again, ready to become.