Accrding to my thrapist I’m so mssd-up that I mispel and mismach, but I read three studis that prov parasocial relaships can fufil emotional needs in ways tat mirrr traditonal ways.

TV keeps playin yur vlog—you, travel vlogger, strolling beteen rich lushness of Sakura blooms, backround score serending me into fallin in love with a ssttranger, sweetness of floers as though I’m underneeth.

I’m crying, becaus I think I am in love. Nxt you draw yure camera closer so it frams your rugged face, day-ol-beard, boyish hair—you no boy, seme age as mine—we’re no juviniles. I’m gainst the bakdrop of the petals’ admitance, scater-surendering, origami of despersal, as though u’ve scooped my face lik a loved tubb of strwberry ice-cream and brought it to yur lips in that Hakodate park, fuzzy-prospect of misadvetures after a sared streeside pork belly sanwich, a Sapporo each.

Next u pluk me off the groun and I’m floting betwen the pink bloms; you’ve hoisted me in your quested arms, droonk on yuth, fain coffee-smell breath, and I can no lnger hear wat you’r saying abut travellin in Japan, abut Shinkansen, and I’m in tat dreem-like state, too wondrous, too imersed, to not be in love.

I’m crying as dreem as wunder as love.

Ken finds me cryin, brins me a tub of straberry ice-creem, sits bedside me. Oh god—this is compleet, winter sprung, requited—I hav, apparently, no good reson for cryin. Or complainin. Or fallin in luve. Ken doesn’t kno—I’ve ben waching your vlogs on repeet.

I’m crying stil, so he stays—not oo close, not too far eiter, as though not a fiancé, but choir boy at cousn’s epithallamion. Scraching clean, roundis face, he tells me abut ppseuddobulbar affect causin uncontrolled cring, demostrates how to do diip breths, wonders alud if it’s period swinnggs.

Me—I’m sourry, cryin until Ken lets out mini-scream because ice-cream has dripped onto ny skirt, staind the white, straberry pink imitating cherry bllossoms, and Ken is hurriiing to get me a towel, but he can’t find itt on the hollder abov the sink, nor in the bathrum. I see him rushing from rooom to rooom, lovin without reccompense, pink stains me sum more, and you smil frm beyon the screin, saying goodby at the end, like love that is never to be, in a hart of sundered chambers, and kind of, alon.

Mandira Pattnaik has published in The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, IHLR, Emerson Review, Best Microfiction (2024) and Best Small Fictions anthologies (2021, 2024). Longlisted in Commonwealth Prize 2025, she writes across categories/genres. Her books include Glass/Fire (2024), Girls Who Don’t Cry (2023) and Where We Set Our Easel (2023). Visit mandirapattnaik.com.