03/20/2026
March 10th
I long for someone to know me the way The Crooked Little Pieces’ Susanna knows Anneliese. Not the knowing that comes from time or proximity, but the kind that requires courage. The kind where someone watches the way you organize your silences and refuses to pretend they haven’t noticed. I have been sitting with a particular loneliness lately, the loneliness of being in many rooms with many people and still feeling fundamentally unseen. I want someone who does the work of knowing me alongside me. Who does not accept the version of me I hand them at the door.
And Susanna gives me hope that this exists. The way she tends to Anneliese, the way she holds up a mirror and says, no, look closer. “If you’re going to compartmentalise people… why don’t you build extra shelves?” There is something almost fierce in how she loves her. Honest in the direction of love. I read them together and I feel the absence of it like a specific hunger, but also, strangely, something like relief. Because Susanna exists, even if only on the page. And if she exists on the page, perhaps she exists somewhere else too.
— Luna
