Her eyes penetrated the text. She went over every letter of every word spelling, sounding out each, caressing every curve, every angle, every line, dots, strokes, going up, going down, imprinting each word, memorizing the feeling, touching every word of that text, so far away from her, so far away, like a distant memory of the voice of a woman sitting at a table next to hers, at the coffee shop, saying out loud things she could hear in passing, codes flying the distance between her mind and her ears, casual, ordinary.

It was as if she had just learned how to read or she's been deaf so long she couldn't remember when last she heard and now for the first time her nerves were tickled with the vibrations, vibrations of something slithery, something forbidden, a promise, perhaps, something promised beyond time, inhumane, farther, much farther, something familiar yet never permitted for her, ...perhaps secrets revealed from a long lost civilization, forgotten before known, unreachable to her, exclusive, as if she'd found herself uninvited in a location, dreamt.

Midway through she realized how her eyes were committing every nuance, not of the words, not of the sounds even, or only..., no..., not only words nor only sounds even, something deeper, every nuance of every curve, the shapes the letters, each, made on the line, in sequence, a code, not the spaces, not in meaning only even, no..., not even, odd, definitely oddly deep, ...deeper, her eyes were committing every shape of every letter, every nuance the lines immersed the sheet with.

It had broken her heart. Her heart had broken as it was meant to.