081413 #worm #roach The space Krim tells the space Me stories that melt his astral heart. He plies her with replicated milkshakes. She lifts herself in his esteem beyond the planet-bound. Her spirit transcends the killingly sexy waitress skirt, the brutally compelling black boots. Her essence blossoms beyond the cafe, beyond the bus stop, beyond womanly form altogether, til she becomes, simultaneously, the tenth floor of a ten-story building; a mossy hollow where Me is king of the lions; a sensual organism made of pure star; and the tallest, scariest, wisest, most popular girl in school, as Me remains a grade behind, too young when it's better to be older, or too old when he wishes he were younger, afraid to read her neat triangle of a note because it surely, if it says she likes him, must be some kind of trick or trap. He turns it over and over with his thumb and two fingers, nervous, as the stars and nebulae whiz by the spaceship's picture windows.