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Salt steaming off the skin and softened fingertips entirely brainlike beneath a gentle rain the conditioner burns your eyes You cannot see your belly but you can taste the damp hair the naked legs and the whole sad world of touch and color just beyond this plastic veil Out there in soft focus the well-adjusted whet their nail clippers and casually incise Slide supine into the shower drain and be swallowed whole.

1. On the eighth night he woke with a gasp for a miracle had taken place: one day’s work lasted a week of dreams and left him sleeping sound for days. Opened eyes never saw so clear— She asks if they are girlfriends yet. He says, “Your favorite food is vodka pasta and I can’t be with someone like that.” He drives her home in hungry silence but as she’s getting out she stops, “Someone said compassion has eleven heads but I’ve got half a mind to lie it's not.” Earlier that day, someone at the restaurant corrected their order that he undercharged. Their tone suggested expectation: a reward, maybe, so he took the money and smiled extra hard. (2. It happened in an escape room— our fourth that week, and the theme was Scary Among passwords and severed limbs, I began to speak in code Empty-chested, heavy bracing anxious for the sacred tongue your calm, hypnotic eyes your cleaner theory of love could not escape the room in time but it was then I heard you say the other silly line about an ancient deity and how all your life is waiting for a private beach to part but for once you’d like to try and show me what you look without your scarf like an empty closet wanting fiery houseplant for I’d hoped I felt it like a flame candle, empty in my cold bones.) 2. At home she stares at the purple circles and in her head, is counting stock: all of Tuesday’s pit-stained children, but who will want her when the green ribbon comes off? And so turns green to red, then orange A thin string takes its faithful place. One full night’s rest before they part— her miracle at end of days. She knows now how Hadrian felt stepping out of Venus’ temple for one last time. As a locust sky caved flat in on itself And as marble pillars rose tall through the concrete She steps in with certain concrete expectations And escapes with a love that is overcomplete.

After school I used to take the bus around Seattle. With some older girls, we walked through furniture stores and sat down on the beds. Sometimes I thought of stealing but my fingers were too small. And I couldn’t wait for growing, for my eyes to wake up, for watching more reels of rocks thrown over bridges more clearly, for my hair to grow long, and my nipples to shrink. To find my way home, I spoke with every old guy on the plane I said it over and over to taste my own perfect name. We loitered until closing, contemplating tables and lamps. I’d put a desk by the window and a big, fluffy rug. Jasmine, who shared a bedroom with four brothers, suggested a code on the toilet bowl. I found it strange when she thanked God for finally growing up and declared myself an atheist. But still I cried when I heard the uttered Shma at night, male children at the mall with mom, Christians on hikes. I grew and grew and filled the whole store up to feel fingers on my back at the long day’s end. I swiped to the top of my camera roll to see if I’d make a good friend. It’s the Last white rhino of all the good things you need to buy. On a bus to somewhere else, got off before your bus arrived. Here I pressed my lips together, prayed for rain between our knees, and imagined a new house that could surely never be.

When I was 13 we had this cat, Gustav. We’d had him since I was born— Father even joked sometimes that Gustav was my twin as he’d been adopted just hours before the birth—but 13 is the year I remember him clearest. Gustav was not a particularly playful nor cuddly companion. Often, he’d withdraw for days, sitting silently on the balcony and eating only at the mercy of his expensive automatic feeder, which Father had bought as he was nearly always away, on business. The feeder enabled Gustav to remain undetectable most of the time. I dare say that I’d periodically forget Gustav even existed, only to be offhandedly reminded by the occasional meow when his food wasn’t dispensed on time, or by a whiff of cat shit walking past the laundry room where his litter box was. I’d be reminded of him by one thing or another, and would try to catch a glimpse of him through the window above my bed. From there the view was mostly of low-rise buildings, sidewalks, people walking their dogs, and the swathes of empty fields that began at the end of the street. But if I angled myself right, a section of the balcony—which Gustav was basically an extension of—was visible. He faced away from the window, perched so close to the edge I sometimes thought he was about to dive off. His cataract eyes were wise and forever fixed on an invisible point in the distance, yearning. The year I’d—we’d—turned 13 was when I first knew Gustav was about to die. He stopped eating. I noticed this maybe a few days later than I’d’ve liked to admit, once the kibble overflowed his feeder and turned the kitchen air dense and salty. That he was ill was stupidly obvious; his eyes and inner ears were painted nuclear yellow. Gustav’s liver was failing, and I was devastated. It wasn’t just the idea of Gustav dying—he was already 13. What really hurt was realizing I’d neglected him for so long. That perhaps Gustav’s solitary air was a symptom, not an excuse for his neglect. On the rare occasion I did notice or remember him, I always told myself that he was too mean to want my attention anyways.Father took Gustav to the vet that weekend, and I cried watching him practically stumble out of his cage and out to the balcony the night he returned. It felt as though an eternity had passed since I’d last given him my undivided attention. Maybe even since that photo was taken of us in the crib, my mouth open, one arm holding a shaker and the other pawing apathetically at his face. Where had the years gone? I longed to know only that white kitten of childhood, to forget the shadow who limped before me, coat dust-colored and stinking of mildew. The year I turned 13 was also the time I became obsessed with classical music. It was my remedy in those horrible weeks alone in the apartment, counting down the days to Friday. The summer break that seemed never to end. Night after night I ate ketchup toast and potato chips, alone, thinking of Father. Wondering if he was thinking of me, too. The days he came home I tolerated the silence, knowing it would soon be broken by his jangling keys or heavy footsteps in the hall. But most days it was too much to bear, silence. I had to escape. I needed music. And so I’d started taking long walks through the dried up fields at the end of our street. The ground there was cement and glass, mostly. Browned grass, brittle kindling in the August heat. I’d put on Beethoven or Strauss and watch it all come to life, thorns turned to poppies, gravel to creeping lavender. In my mind, transfigured: a vast tableau of European pastoralia. I saw Mahler at Steinbach. I saw the life I lusted after. It had to be shared. Fuck! The refrigerator whinnied into silence. Without his nourishment, the walls seemed to bend in and cave around us. The air thickened and the lights flickered off and on at will. The sink began to leak. In all his absence, I never thought of my father as a negligent man. Every Saturday he cleaned, changed the lightbulbs, took out the trash, consistent as a machine. He refilled the cash envelope I was to use for groceries with the same four bills. He stood outside and had a smoke on the balcony in the evening. It was all I could do not to beg him to stay when everything was done. He stepped out of the door and immediately I could feel the pipes rusting, the floorboards creaking. And the guilt, animating the wind that crept in through the open balcony. Haunted by that clear vision of Gustav and terrorized by regret, my immediate intuitive thought process told me that to redeem myself for the years of abandonment, all I had to do was hold him—forcibly—on my lap, and listen to the entirety of the Pastorale. I had to show him true beauty, as if to make up for the many lost years and perhaps even liberate the kitten hidden beneath the armor. I had to save Gustav. But by the start of the second movement, I was distracted enough for him to recognize the window for escape. With a hiss and a cautionary flexion of the claws, he clambered down and out to the balcony almost entirely unresisted. By that point, the vet said, Gustav was completely recovered, though to me it looked like the yellowing had only gotten darker and more severe, if anything. And despite my efforts it seemed he was spending more time on the balcony than ever. By September I had started school again, and things were largely as they had always been. Gustav and I stayed in our lanes. Father came home on the weekends. It was one such weekend—he came home early, in fact—when Father caught me smoking on the balcony. His rage shook the walls. If I was so intent on killing myself, he hissed, it should at least be on my own dollar. He tore through the kitchen drawers, in search of the grocery money—and stuffed it back in his wallet. I retaliated, screaming that perhaps he should be more worried about the ends he had just pointed out (me killing myself) rather than the means, and that I hadn’t bought the cigarettes with his money anyways, which was true. Sort of—they were his. He marched out without a word more, and through sobs I listened to the car start and then screech away again