Close 2022 (April 20, 2026)

One day—yesterday night—I had been feeling like a rotten egg. I had gone to the gym earlier, meditated, edited (tried to), and then started reading. I just felt this trembling in my brain, as if it were having a hard time processing time and everything around me. I had a cigarette, put it out, then moved on to the next one. I kept going until I came back inside from the balcony, smelling like a punched nicotine bag that hadn’t showered in weeks—a rotten, milk soaked cat ball, to be exact. I haven’t smelled one before, but that’s the description I would give it.

I slipped into my bed covers, which I was already planning on washing that morning because it was Sunday—the “reset” day. So nonchalantly, yet looking like a sad blob of a person, I opened my film library—the ones on my “wanted to watch” letterboxD list—and pressed on the beautiful cover of Close by Lukas Dhont. A boy with a look in his eye like the Mona Lisa—one I couldn’t perceive whether he was sad, happy, both, or even scared—and that instantly pulled me. The film introduced the boy as -Léo- a little french kid from the suburbs who works in his family farm