People with soft lives want time to curve around in a circle. Their sentences are parabolas tied together. They dream about snakes biting their tail and stories looping around a dark center. History does not scare them. People with hard lives are scared of history. They want time unsnapped from its circle like a bullwhip lashing ahead. People with soft lives arrange the world like a tea party. The tea in the cups is sweet and milky, and the space between the place settings is filled with chinking noises. People with hard lives aren't invited because their sentences start and stop like a scary driver. You have a hard life and if you ever talked I bet you'd talk like a bad driver. People with soft lives keep that a secret. They dream about all of the submerged gears and rhythms of the world. Just like English people, they dream about tea parties. They are furious at the hard people with the careening sentences and avert their eyes from the road littered with car bones. My life is hard and soft in different places. That's why I am the only one who knows this. I am both ways at the same time.