The moon's an arrant thief / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun

I’m writing this with my back up against a locker. There is a lineman, maybe six foot three, 265lbs with his catchers mitt of a hand wrapped around my throat. The funny thing is we were close friends in elementary school — but people change. The faux leather yellow of his letterman jacket sleeve is glistening, and I think that maybe this is the light I’m supposed to follow for eternal peace and quiet. My feet are six inches off the ground and my loafers are about to slip off of my sweaty feet. My thick tortoise-shell glasses are inching down my nose, but I’m not sure I want to watch this scene unfold anyway. I am not the jock anymore, I am the nerd, and I’m almost out of breath.

Reading Pale Fire can do this to you, if you let it. It is a novel sold as a poem wrapped in a dizzying psychosis. You think you’re reading a man’s elegy for his daughter, but you’re really witnessing another man’s collapse — a footnote unraveling into really loud fucking scream into a void.

Nabokov doesn’t give you a story; he gives you a puzzle, burns the piece’s, then dances on the ashes.

Then the lineman releases his grip. You fall to the floor in a thud. Everyone at school points and laughs. But you are fine, because you know that you know something they never will. Tears slowly drip down your cheeks into the beautiful crack of a smile.