The blood rushes in and out of my cheeks, a turbulent tide. I’m afraid of tomorrow. And every day after. I don’t close the door right away when you leave. I watch you pick a dandelion from the sidewalk and study it curiously. As if you’ve never witnessed an identity crisis before. I think you’re going to make a wish—hope that you do—hope that it’s about me—but instead you stick it under the windshield wiper of a stranger’s car before calling a Lyft. I watch the sun rise behind the vacation homes and it’s so painfully ordinary in comparison. 

He asks me why my hand is on his shoulder. Um, well I don’t know, I respond. He takes my hand from his shoulder and holds it. He examines my hand, as if he has never seen it before. I wonder if he’ll do the same to my eyes, just like he used to when we’d spend our time alone. If I could, I’d faint.

I have no control over my mouth as it yells and shouts. All I want him to do is hear. To wake up and listen.
My glass house is shattering and the little girl in a blue dress runs out chasing a rabbit.

I am the girl. She is the rabbit. But I run circles around her

and I cannot pause.

I was almost certain that the neighbor was a serial killer. The small doubt came from the fact that we both watched Game 6 of the 2011 World Series together – the same night the neighbor’s television broke – and got along famously. That doubt was erased, when, on that same night, I was bludgeoned to death with a remote right as David Freese hit that game-winning home run in the bottom of the 11th inning. 

This is my chance. I place my blazer over her shoulders. At the end of the song, I let her wear it back to her seat. When all eyes have returned to me, no one notices her take eight metal rods, a roll of duct tape, and some wire cutters (all smuggled into the prison inside a specially made electric guitar) from the pockets and hide them in various parts of her tracksuit. 

Dolly pondered from her place at the kitchen sink, the room littered with dishes. She hadn’t remembered buying so many dishes and wondered how they would fit inside her cabinets, which were too small. Each dish needed washing, which brought her back to her everyday question, is this what it’s like, standing alone at the sink while the child drools?

His name is Bobby, but often, he responds to the call of Booby. We are grown, up, but he stays Booby to the best of us. Who would name a cat Bobby or Booby? Beats me. Like orange and its equal-opposite.

Tessa tiptoed over to the bag. Its presence was heavy in the room. Her hand moved, delicately, towards the zipper, as if she were disarming a bomb. She didn’t know if she wanted to see what was inside, and yet, she moved the zipper along its designated path, her hand acting of its own accord.

They said they didn’t want me to die here either – at least not before we got our cannolis and tiramisu. I assured them that I meant Boston and not the restaurant.  But Boston was the only place I’d ever lived, I say, and I loved it, but I didn’t want to die without having lived somewhere else. I tell them heading south and west. 

He loved the stars: he would speak endlessly about Orion the Hunter, Hercules, Corona Borealis, Sagittarius. If we were outside at night he would point out their locations and recite the myths and stories surrounding the flickering of those magical lights in the sky.