You were struck suddenly by flashbulb memories that burst forth behind your eyes; memories of a flicker of red hair and the flashing of whiskey colored onlookers. You felt soft skin adorned by fine peach fuzz beneath your fingertips, where the skin had been torn apart and mutilated by your teeth.

The train whistled and ran by vast farmland at the rate that your mind was racing. The patchwork of landscape made the Earth’s rotation visible to you and you remembered how the world spun at thousands of miles per hour and when she had looked at you, your heart hammered in time with it.
She peered through dark freckles that were placed carefully across her nose and her eyes glimmered with recognition. Her lips worked, but no sound was brought forth from her mind, and she looked at you with a racing mind, thinking everything and nothing at all at once, as though she had spent the last year caught between indifference and feeling.
You understood her, and your hand gripped around the lens of the camera that hung around your neck, the strap of it leaving an itching burning friction on your skin. You ran your finger underneath it, relieving the feeling only described as the worst kind of discomfort. There was a sharp pain in your armpits and your throat burned. You yourself were caught between silence and screaming.
She said your name, and her voice tolled like a bell, though many other people surrounded the two of you. “Ralph.”
You looked at her, and were struck by a deep sadness as you said her name in return. Her laughter paraded through your memory, and you remembered tears welling up in her eyes as storm clouds swelled heavy above you and the striking of raindrops on sidewalk accompanied the palpable electricity like neurons firing through the summer humidity. “Daisy.”
To your surprise, she smiled. Her bottom teeth crowded in her lower jaw, and dimples deepened into her cheeks.
Your lips involuntarily turned upward and a sigh escaped your nostrils as a deep tension deflated from your chest.
“I see you took my advice,” she said, a chuckle rising shallowly in her throat.
“Live serendipitously,” you repeated the words she had once said to you back to her now.
“Until we see each other again,” she said, repeating your response in return.
Flashbulbs burst behind her eyes as well, as though her camera flash were still filling the room like lightning illuminating your bedroom where you lay silently weeping that night. Your stepfather had looked down on you with kind light eyes and he told you that some people weren’t worth saving, and you wondered if he was talking about her or you.
Choking down the thought, you soften your eyes to her, keeping strong mind to not soften your heart, because the golden joinery in the cracks had fused the pieces together not too long before, and gold was the most malleable of metals.
“Do you mind?” she asked. Her index finger was extended toward the seat next to you and you nodded curtly, suddenly feeling moisture collecting under your arms. You bunched your body up toward the window to make room, kicking your bag underneath the seat in front of you. A heated conversation between a mother and a daughter was taking place in the seats behind you; one in which you felt nearly compelled to insert yourself into, if only just to defend the young girl. You had however lost interest in this when Daisy’s eyes shot through you like an arrow whizzing through the air to pierce a soul.
She stood and made the short trek across the aisle, but you noticed a stray piece of hair that had fallen loose from one of her braids, and it let the wind comb it through before it fell upon her face as her body fell in line with yours, not for the first time, not for the last.
You were both silent for a four count rest before you both tried to say hello at the same time, words colliding midair before turning around one another and making it to each other’s ears. You both laughed when you realized, and she began again. “Hello.”
“Hi,” you said quietly, lips dry.