travis is on top of his shit.

i asked my interns to write something about strangers.  Travis, my fellow tao lin intern's intern, as well as my intern, wrote this:

i make the man a latte and he asks me, what are you doing living here. i
thought you lived with birds, or with small and nearly blind mammals. i
thought you lived near a river, near a jungle, i thought you lived
upstate at least. i told him that at night raccoons came into our house
and scattered dry pasta on the kitchen floor. they chewed so loudly, we
all woke up. i told him that at night they pawed at my bedroom window,
asking to be let in. out there on the roof, they got into confrontations
with our housecats. i told him, back then when we shared our home with
spiders who gave birth in stainless steel pots we never injured
ourselves. everything was coated in silk. i tell him, we were thirsty
often. we shared our water with the deer and our tree sap with the
insects. i tell him, none of us spoke the same language. i tell him, we
were all strangers.