Pull the cord to stop

She had a detachable nose. Or at least I suspected. The way it stood out from her face and kind of dominated you would think it was a design choice, like maybe she had a whole collection of them and today felt like a day for being striking.

I thought about saying this to her while she sat on a plastic bus seat reading one of those plain little books that had been re-bound by the library with each passing decade, but I’d learned a long time ago that I wasn’t that great at things I thought were maybe compliments. She would probably just had said Oh and gone blade-eyed back to her book.

I wanted her to be interested, though, to see that having something weird was better than being regular. I wanted her to have something to say about me that would be unintentionally cutting. How my hair looks like it’s trying to start a band. How I probably think my lips are closed but really there is a slight gap in the center. How I look like the kind of person who would be dressed better. I was itchy is what, not for a fight exactly, not for conversation exactly, not for love exactly, but for something.