Now I'm feeling competitive.

You're working on any particular essay tonight?

[Edit: x-posted with Allyson's edit, of course.]

You could use toxic thread in the embroidery of a Roy Rogers-ish western shirt, of course.

Would you be able to get enough poison into the thread to do real damage? You might be better off just soaking the fabric in poison.

Nilly, the story I'm working on right now is tentatively titled, "WWBD?" (What Would Buffy Do?)

Here's a snip of the piece I edited earlier, which is really your story. You might have already read this part:

Nilly’s stay in the U.S. seemed frighteningly short. One second we were buying traveler’s checks, the next, someone posted that Nilly was safely delivered to JFK where she would be taking a long flight back to the Middle East.

I was terribly sad that it was over, that I would probably never see my friend Nilly again, for the rest of my life. Have you ever said good-bye to someone you genuinely love, knowing that you would live out the rest of your lives never seeing each other ever again? I didn’t really think about that when Nilly left my apartment. As long as she was on U.S. soil, I could hop on a red-eye and see her in five hours at the most. Shit, I could take a long nap in the air and wake up and have breakfast with her, that same day.

So when I read the board, and saw that she would be leaving, I felt like I was sinking in tar, a little helpless. I wanted to call JFK and say, “Wait, I want to spend another day with you in our pajamas eating hummus til noon, talking about traffic jams on the Gaza strip.”

That’s when my phone rang, and it was Nilly, from the international terminal at JFK. She called to tell me that New York was the most alive place she’d ever seen, that even the sidewalks seemed to breathe, when you realize it’s the subway moving under your feet. She said thank you, thank you, thank you, a dozen times. She said she wouldn’t forget this, ever. Every syllable was punctuated with gratitude and a promise that she would come back, someday. That we’d sit and talk for hours. Her English had progressed so quickly over the few weeks she was here that I had to ask her to slow down. My stomach ached and my eyes welled up, because though I know she was genuine to the bone about her promise to come back again, life has a way of getting sticky and full, and promises don’t so much get broken…sometimes, they just tend to fade with the wear of the calendar pages flipping.

I hope to see my dear friend again, someday.

Oof, Allyson. I have to run to a lecture. I'll have to read it later.

Night, all!

[Edit: now, surprising nobody, I'm all teary too. For the record.]

Oh, Allyson.

That's lovely, Allyson.

Damn allergies

Wonderful, Allyson.

Oh, Allyson. That's so freaking beautiful.

The question in my mind after reading that is when are we bringing Nilly back?

You could use toxic thread in the embroidery of a Roy Rogers-ish western shirt, of course.

Kind of a modern update of that coat stained with Hydra blood that burned itself into Hercules' skin?

Every syllable was punctuated with gratitude

This. Nilly is the most gracious person I have ever met.