The text message that got lost in Northville Connecticut was aimed at an overweight boy with a pale white face marked by two severe pimples almost luscious in their sheen. The text was a critique of a popular song being played on the radio, which the author of the text believed was being listened to concurrently by the boy. The song featured three chords in semi-distortion and questionable singing. The text was, simply, “gag.” Gagging, in this context, was the visceral reaction one might have listening to said song.

The text message that got lost in Northville Connecticut was never read by the overweight boy, as he was in the bathroom transgressing a mass of pus in one of his pimples through its ruptured membrane somewhat inefficiently with obtuse pudgy fingers. They met online and texted often, each vicariously living the minutiae of the other’s days. Every song, every wind, every passing cloud was referred to. The death of growing up had not reared yet, and hope rippled outward in tiny circles from their chests. They shared the same sun, and burned their eyes out looking.

The text message that got lost in Northville Connecticut hung on a branch of one of the town’s opulent verdant trees. It was autumn, the leaves bled warm prisms. Quiet, quite so. The orange man of street view never walked these roads, so the mystery will remain. Some baby birds, their vision not fully formed, mouthed agape for what they thought was maternally regurgitated matter. Had they known it was only a text from a fat girl in Pennsylvania who loved a fat boy from Massachusetts, they surely would have gagged, if only offered a chance at such anthropomorphism.