"There are shadows in the songs, she said shadows, and these blank spaces like gasps, or awful hesitations. It's nothing musical, she said, I suppose-- Not that it matters, although sometimes, or really in the best times, the music makes me-- lonely, or maybe just small, (it's me with all those empty spaces you know, floating about like I'm dreaming, except the words feel like earth and dirt and breath, and those aren't so dreamy are they? But they're sure. Most times.) Does everything feel scarce and fleeting to you, at least sometimes? Because sometimes, she said, it does to me. I think you know. There's some kind of-- frightened gasping in the songs. Shadows. I've seen them before, underneath us, underneath the smiles, wrinkles, porcelain, the dirty smudges and lazy eyes. They must haunt you, she said--"

-Ellery