By Bryce Emley
Hey, I just met you,
And this is crazy,
But here’s my number,
So call me maybe?
— Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe
Having never met, this is what I’ve observed of you: you are not who you are, but a slant-rhymed chorus, a shared moment in a nightclub that doesn’t exist, a set of perfect bangs draped like a walrus fin across a Photoshopped forehead.
I can only know you as I can know a painting in braille, a canteen of melted glacier from the deepest cavern of Antarctica, the will of God leather-bound on a bookshelf, a radio broadcast from the scene of a tragedy in a country I’ve never heard of.
I can know you as far as the only thing I can know about you: you’ve read this, and you are the reader.
Bryce Emley is a freelance writer/editor and has served on staff with The Florida Review, H_NGM_N, and BULL. His writing can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, The Pinch, Pleiades, and other places; he writes regularly for Matador Network.
