Only about five percent of the body of a jellyfish is solid matter; the rest is water.
— National Ocean Service

on the eighth day eve asked god to let her clone herself, 
and he said no, no, dear there’s a reason i left 
          that gaping hole inside your body. 
try to press yourself back into a missing bleached calcium bone, 
in the end you will be the hollow one, pray he will fill you.

          i am not eve. i have traded in my legs for tentacles 
          and my brain for buoyancy; i have tasted the fruit and know 
that in this current, isolation 
does not mean solitude. it is me and me 
and every time i am cut in half, i build 
myself a clone. i don’t 
          need a knife, i don’t need pain, and i 
          don’t have a heart anyway so hey, run the copy.

to be the jellyfish is to create company 
          knowing that, were the weight of the water to sway you to bed-
          rock, you could do it all again, create a circle of ghostly cnidaria orbiting 
in the dark. you are your own completion, fill your own hollows.

          i open my eyes and find that i have been pressed back 
          into a human girl, made solid only to find a black hole between my legs. 
now, i am growing up and drying out, water flies 
out of me like rain and i am losing 
my chance to build that colony of mine, now 
          i have to look for sperm outside 
          of myself and my eggs will waste 

          away, now i am more than the 5% but less 
of a whole, and i have this instant 
of longing where i am turritopsis nutricula, immortal  
jellyfish, and i can reverse the cycle so that i am back 
to that time when i don’t need anyone 
          but don’t want anyone anyway, i am free 

in my fish bowl without a head or a heart or a brain. just the one 
          hole, mouth, anus, input, output, sustenance, waste. synonymous. i am afraid
i have spit out something integral 

to my survival, is that where the other 95% goes? but now i have sprouted arms and legs 
          and a vagina and they look at me and say, homo sapien, 
and i say hold me, please. give me a lasso and i will go 
          diving, maybe i can gather and bind my selves together 
with proteins somewhere in my chest, you’ll call them 

an organ, i’ll call them another hollow
this human cannot fill alone.

Synonyms:
to fall in love with everyone you meet, to watch everyone you meet fall in love and drift away, to fall in love with the tectonic plate you rest upon, to trust that it will cover you with lava, to pray that the tectonic plate you rest upon will cover you with lava, to pray that something will shift or click or break, to bump into people and bite your tongue to keep from kissing them. saudade - Portuguese: refers to a longing or nostalgia for something you may never have experienced, or may never experience again

See also: 
Valentine’s Day, wedding albums, empty king beds, silence, cold hands, numbers in your phone that you’ve never texted, deciding not to decorate with pictures of yourself because you read that solitary figures in bedrooms carry bad energy, looking up celebrities and calculating the age difference.     Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese art form resting on the premise that the world is made up of energy. One of the many teachings of Feng Shui is that artwork in the bedroom should always depict pairs. It teaches that objects in general should be arranged in pairs in order to remind the subconscious to strive for a romantic pair itself. Feng Shui heavily emphasizes the connection between the arrangement of one’s environment and the quality of one’s love life.

     I have one lamp in my bedroom. I have one candle, one trash can, one armoire towering to my left when I fall asleep. I do not believe in Feng Shui. I believe in buying pairs of items when you have a pair to use them. I do not. uroboros - a circular symbol depicting a snake swallowing its tail as an emblem of wholeness or infinity

Synonyms:
To kiss yourself before going to bed, to give yourself a long hug because you heard it releases endorphins. I sometimes find myself looking up ways to release endorphins, watching movies where the girl doesn’t get the guy but her world doesn’t fall apart. Sometimes I watch the dawn and feel enough. ya’aburnee - Arabic: literally “you bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them

Am I allowed to whisper ya’aburnee to passing strangers? Can I use the trial and error method? Can I pay to have ya’aburnee written out in sky letters, loop de loop to loop de loop spiraling across an empty blue? Can I get a job as a barista just to write it on coffee cups? Can I write it on the top of my umbrella so that people on low-flying airplanes or in hot air balloons will see and come landing, shovel in hand?      The uroboros, initially an ancient Egyptian symbol, symbolizes eternity and the cyclic nature of time. I have to envy the uroboros. To fill up on itself, to be full, to be eternal without being eternally lonely. I wonder if there is any record of a human girl being reincarnated as a uroboros. I wonder if the uroboros can understand language. I wonder if as the uroboros eats its tail, it whispers into itself something like ya’aburnee. I wonder if the uroboros is willing to bury itself. I wonder if the uroboros is capable of burying itself. I wonder if at some point after the Greeks, that is where they all went. If each uroboros quietly slithered into the rising sand, rising because foolish girls and boys and women and men continued to destroy themselves by becoming empty to fill up on others. floccinaucinihilipilification - the estimation of something as valueless

The hardest homework assignment I have received to date was the “Getting to Know You” worksheet from the beginning of Spanish class this year. 
Algo que hago bien es ___.  
Something I do well is ___.
At the end of class we were given fifteen minutes to work on the sheet. I spent the full fifteen minutes looking at that blank, thinking … The bell rang, and I starred the question. At home, I spent over an hour staring at it. I moved on to other work to give myself time to think, then I came back to it … The assignment only required me to choose a few of the provided questions to answer in Spanish. The morning the assignment was due, I decided to leave that particular question blank. It felt like a betrayal. It also felt expected.      I am curled up inside a worn nylon sleeping bag listening to my friends talk about boys. About which ones they’ve kissed, which ones they’ve wanted to. They’ve turned out the overhead light so that the fan is just a violent shadow, chopping like helicopter blades against the darkened ceiling. Now they’re talking about passing notes in class and about the boys that used to have crushes on them. I envision the helicopter. I envision the pilot like a young Tom Cruise, scouring the site of a shipwreck for survivors. I envision myself waving my arms in the air, signalling for a rescue. Instead I mention that as far as I know, no boy has ever had a crush on me. The silence that follows is the tangible kind, the kind that you’re pretty sure you could dust away with a broom like cobwebs. Hurry up Tom, they’re killing me down here. I don’t have a broom, so instead I laugh and bring up the newest school couple. They chime back in, and soon the conversation fills the room again. We’re in clear waters now, Tom. I close my eyes and try to fall asleep.

    “Well, Maus,” Papa began, using Gerde’s favorite nickname. “A long, long time ago, there was a great fight all around the world, and so the Americans came to Germany. Not many people know this, but some of the Americans climbed all the way up to the peak of Zugspitze.” 
    His fingers strained to the to top of his knee, which formed a peak under the blanket. 
    “And then, they saw the summit cross. Maus, do you know what they did when they saw that cross?”
    Gerde nodded, making a finger gun with her hand. “Pew, pew. Pew, pew.”
    “Yes, Maus, they used it for target practice. Which is why-” Here Papa grunted, pretending to haul a new cross up the mountain. “-we have a new cross up there today. But some people,” he added, tapping her nose. “Some say that the original cross is buried up somewhere on Zugspitze, waiting for one brave little Maus to find it.”
    “I could find it, Papa.”
    “Ja, Gerde. I know you could.” Here he gave her a sly look and leaned in close as if sharing a secret. “And if you do, you should know that it is magic.”
    Gerde’s eyes widened. “How is it magic, Papa?”
    “Long ago, before soldiers and guns and such, there was lightning on the mountain, great bolts coming down in storms not too different from the one we are in now. And this lightning would strike the cross again and again until finally, the cross was taken down for repairs. And who can say where the lightning went? I think just a little bit is trapped inside that original cross, waiting to be released.”
    “What would it do, Papa? If it were released?”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, who can say, Maus? I imagine a wild thing like lightning can do a great many things. Perhaps it is up to the imagination of the wielder.”
    Gerde sat up. “I know exactly what I’d use it for, Papa.” She rose onto her knees, jumping up and down on the bed. “I’d use it to cure Mama’s hands! Then she could teach me to paint and be a proper artist!”
    Laughing in a gentle but pained way, her father kissed her on the head and slowly rose, guiding her back under the covers and tucking the blanket under her sides. “Between the two of you, this house would make the greatest art Germany had ever seen. Gute Nacht, little Maus.”
    “Gute Nacht, Papa.”     Ten years old and fiercely determined, Gerde stood on the summit alone, gripping the hiking rope beside her. In her mind, she could see it winding all down the mountainside, dark and steady against the snow, which shifted in the wind like Mama’s powdered sugar. This hike was what Gerde loved best about weekends. Papa let her ride the gondola lift up to Zugspitze, where he would always give her the same talk before going inside to work in the lodge: “Today you’ll find that summit cross, ja? Remember to watch where you step. Be careful, Maus.”
    Looking out past the summit cross, Gerde saw the peaks of Germany and Austria stabbing upward. On a clear day, this view would have revealed four countries, but today the snow fell like a veil across the horizon. 
    An alpine chough lighted on the cross, cawing at Gerde. Remembering how the birds back at the main lodge used to eat from her mother’s fork, Gerde fumbled in her pockets for a morsel, but could feel nothing through her thick gloves. 
    “Nichts,” she told the crow, smiling shyly. “Sorry. I have nothing for you.”
    The little bird cried out again, its yellow beak catching the sun, fire against its dense coat of black feathers. Gerde wondered if she had time to go back to the main platform and find food scraps for the crow. Papa had said he would bring a hot chocolate to share soon. Gerde had been hiking practically since she was a baby, and she knew these paths like the back of her hand. Gerde turned to go, and another crow landed in front of her, cawing insistently.
    “I know, I know. I’m going to get you something right now,” Gerde promised, stepping around it. The bird called at her back, seeming distressed, and Gerde told herself to be fast.     The first thing Gerde was aware of was the cold. Somehow, she was no longer wearing her jacket, and her wool sweater was not enough to shield her from the biting wind. She shuddered, and a nearby voice said, “You’ll catch your death dressed like that, Spatzi.”
    “Papa?”
    Gerde sat up and looked around, but all she could make out through the snow was a giant crow perched on the ground beside her, taller than she was. The crow spoke again.
    “Nein, Spatzi. Here, let me give you something for that cold.”
    The bird bent to the earth and grasped something with its beak, suddenly producing a beautiful black feathered cape from the snow. Gerde stared. 
    “How did you do that?”
    The crow made the strangest sound, a kind of breathy cawing almost like laughter.
    “I can do a great many things here, Spatzi. It is my realm.”
    “What do you mean, your realm? And why do you call me Spatzi?”
    The tissue tightened on both sides of the crow’s beak as if it were smiling at her.
    “The air is thin on Zugspitze, Gerde. It is easy to fall into other worlds. This is Vogelland, the land of birds. I call you Spatzi because that is what you are, a little sparrow.”
    “If you call me Spatzi, what do I call you?”
    Again, the crow strained its face as if it was smiling. “I am Anse.”
    Without thinking, Gerde held out her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you, Anse. I’m Gerde.”
    “Ja, I know,” Anse said good naturedly, allowing her to grasp his wing. “We have been waiting for you, Spatzi.”
    “We?”
    “My brother, Eike, waits for us at the top of the platform.” Anse now knelt on the ground beside Gerde and spread his wings. They were marvelously iridescent, as if crystals had been slipped in between the layers of feathers. Gerde now saw that Anse was quite large, big enough to carry her.
    “Do you want me to get on your back?” she asked. 
    “Ja, Spatzi. We have a ways to go.”
    Gerde carefully climbed onto Anse, careful not to pull at his plumage. 
    “Now put your arms around my neck, and we’ll be off.”
    “Is it very hard, flying?” Gerde asked. “I’ve never flown before.”
    “Nein, Spatzi, it is like ice skating with your hands. You will learn soon enough. Are you holding on?”
    “Ja, Anse.”
    Anse leapt over the side of the rockface, catching the air under his great wings. Suddenly, they shot upward and into a cloud, so that all Gerde could see was mist. Ice crystals stung her cheeks, and she buried her face in Anse’s back. As abruptly as they had risen, they descended, and she found herself tumbling off Anse’s back and onto the platform. 
    Gasping, she looked around her wildly. “But Anse, where are the gondola cars? Where is the lodge?”
    Anse walked softly to stand beside her, leaving deep impressions in the snow behind him. “We do not need them, Spatzi. We can fly up to any mountain, and our food lies at the base of Zugspitze, in Toller Wald, the Great Forest.”
    Gerde was about to protest that she could not fly when a second massive crow landed before them.
    “Ah, Spatzi, this is my brother Eike,” Anse said warmly.
    The crow knelt on its great orange talons so that its yellow beak was buried in the snow. Gerde could not keep from staring at the way its knees bent backwards, inverted and strange.
    When it rose, it spoke softly, in a voice more gravelly and deeper than Anse’s. More like what one would imagine a crow sounded like, Gerde supposed. 
    “It is a pleasure to finally speak to you, little one.”
    “Finally?” Gerde asked. “Have we met before?”
     Eike’s black eyes turned up at the edges, and his laugh sounded to Gerde like the crackle of broken beech leaves in the fall, somehow comforting in its roughness. 
     “We have met a great many times, Spatzi. But you would not have remembered Anse or me. The peak of the mountain holds open the sky for a great many worlds here. Vogelland is but one of them.”
     Eike gestured to the edge of the platform with his beak. “There are two paths down this mountain for you, Spatzi. Both are correct. Anse and I are merely your guides; we can show you, but we cannot choose.”
     The wind had picked up, and now it seemed to pull at Gerde’s straw-colored hair like invisible hands. 
     “When are you going to show me?” Gerde asked, raising her small voice to overcome the wind. 
     Anse gently pushed Gerde toward the mountain’s edge. She clawed at his feathers, afraid of being blown over. She had never felt so light, as if in jumping, she might not even fall. 
     “This is one path, Spatzi,” Anse murmured into her ear. “I can teach you to fly to the horizon and back. Horizons are fixed in Vogelland. You will learn to become used to such things.”
     Gerde shuddered. “But Anse, I will fall. I do not have your wings.”
     Anse shook his great black head. “Nein, Spatzi. The wings will come to you. You will see.”
     Gerde leaned forward skeptically, straining her eyes to see the forest below, but all she saw was thick gusts of snow. She looked up and jumped, startled to see Eike on her other side with something clutched in his beak. He gently laid it at her feet. 
     “Take a long look, Spatzi,” he cawed. “This is the other path. It will take you down the trail you came from.” 
     Gerde stared at the ground. The thick green jacket was torn in a couple places, with a deep red-brown stain on the back of the collar. Gerde stepped back, feeling that it might burn her toes. She looked up at Eike, trembling.
     “I don’t understand.”
     The crow was silent, studying her with narrowed eyes and a slightly cocked head. 
     “You have seen your options, Spatzi. Now we await your decision.”
     “Is that mine?” Gerde asked quietly, waving her arm toward the jacket. She could not bring herself to look at it. 
     “Ja, Spatzi.” Anse’s voice was nearly a whisper.
     “If I choose the jacket, what will I see?”
     Eike only shook his head.
     “I want to see Papa. I want him to hold me.” Gerde’s eyes began to burn, but she knew it wasn’t the wind or the cold. The two birds were still. They seemed like forgotten shadows, left on the dark side of the mountain, suddenly sprouting wings to stand beside her. She could feel no warmth at Anse’s side, and she imagined that Eike’s eyes were little black ice chips. 
     “I choose the jacket.” Gerde could hardly get the words out. 
     Eike bowed his head, and Anse knelt so that Gerde could get on his back again. Gerde knew crows did not cry, but his eyes seemed much glossier than before. The flight down to the trail was much the same as the flight up had been, abrupt and fast and unbelievably white and cold. The landing caught Gerde by surprise, and she tumbled off Anse’s back into the snow. He held out his wing to help her up. Once she was standing, he pushed her with his head toward the curve in the path. Gerde could see nothing through the snow now. She was only aware of the ground beneath her feet, Anse’s head against her back, and the stone right beside her that blocked her view of the path ahead. Then suddenly, Gerde was past the stone, and everything fell away. She turned wildly, but Anse and Eike were nowhere to be found. The storm had subsided, so she had a clear view of the snow-covered mass in front of her. It was disheveled and dark and bent in all sorts of strange ways, but Gerde recognized the straw hair, the little ears poking up through the ice. It took Gerde several moments to connect the icy patch on the path to her own crumpled body, head bashed in by a rock she guessed she had fallen on. A screech tore itself from her throat, involuntary and painful and inhuman. Gerde stumbled away from her corpse, scrambling back around the curve in the path.
    “Anse! Eike!” She ran and ran, but saw no black feathers, no talons or gleaming golden beaks. Gerde found herself back at the platform, alone and freezing without the jacket. 
    “Anse! Eike!” She called again. “I chose wrong! I’m sorry.”
     Gerde waited, but she was entirely alone. She looked around. The gondola cars were back, but they were dark and not in use. She looked over the edge of the mountain. The forest at the base looked just as she remembered it, twigs in a snowglobe from this height. Gerde took a deep breath. 
     “I don’t know what else to do,” she called out, partly to herself.
     Gerde shuffled forward until her toes hung over the edge. She kept her eyes on the Zugspitze cross, radiant even in the midst of so many clouds. In that instant, Gerde felt almost certain that this new cross contained some magic of its own. She had never seen such glowing metal. But maybe, she reasoned, this was in fact the best hiding site for the old cross: maybe the cross was never changed at all, and the one she looked at burned with thousand-year-old lightning. But it made no difference. There was no getting the cross to Mama without the gondola cars, and Gerde still didn’t understand the meaning of her mangled body on the path. At a crossroads, she felt that her only option was forward. Downward. Gerde lifted her right foot and placed it out in midair. The countryside had never looked so still, and Gerde imagined all the little families, the fingers stretching on the blankets, all the little mice drifting off into sleep. Gerde closed her eyes. She stretched her arms out at her sides, spreading her fingers all the way so that the air threaded in between. Leaning forward onto her right foot, she let herself fall. Her eyes opened out of instinct, but she found that she could not scream, only make a deep, guttural croak as she plunged down toward the toothpick trees. Gerde waved her arms wildly in the air, but to no avail. The ground drew nearer and nearer, and she could only think about how badly she wanted her jacket. Gerde at last managed to let out a scream, shrill and resounding. A split second before impact, it happened. She had never felt such pain, as if the core of all of her bones was melting into lava, burning her up with it. She closed her eyes and felt her legs grow incredibly heavy. Crying out, she felt the vertebrae in her spine fuse, neck becoming stiff and immobile. Her teeth suddenly retracted into their gums, and Gerde’s eyes widened, tongue feeling for the lost bony peaks. There was an intense tingling at the base of her spine, and she felt her tailbone extend into the frosty air behind her. The burning sensation now spread across Gerde’s skin, and she screamed in agony as feathers erupted, thick and black. A single tear rolled down Gerde’s cheek, and then her jaw wrenched itself forward with a terrible crack, and her nose seemed to arc down to meet it, forming a hard beak. All at once the burning feeling vanished, and Gerde felt hollow and light. Her vision sharpened, and she saw her own shadow on the ground, wings creating a cross shape on the snow. She allowed her wings to spread out fully, catching the breeze and suddenly finding herself rising through the trees. Like ice skating with your hands, Anse had said. Gerde pumped her wings and soared up toward the mountain, toward Papa. She alighted on the summit cross, feeling strange about the scales across her feet. The metal seemed to hum beneath her as if alive. The gondola cars and the lodge were back. Gerde scanned the crowd before her with sharpened eyesight, cawing with delight when she saw Papa walking through the snow, hot chocolate in hand. Gerde tried to call to him, but she could not seem to form words. Papa seemed lost, looking into the crowd around him with a frown. 
    “Gerde?” he called. 
    She was consumed by an intense sorrow, watching him stand there in the snow, surrounded by flocks of people moving back and forth like migrating birds. Eike landed beside her. 
    “It is time, spatzi,” he said simply. “You cannot help him now. You were at the crossroads, and you chose. There is nothing for you here.” He gently used his wing to turn Gerde’s head away from her father. “We fly now.”
     For the second time, Gerde threw herself off the side of the mountain, half expecting to fall again. Instead, she soared beside Eike, and they quickly caught up to Anse. To Gerde’s surprise, the horizon seemed to actually be drawing closer. It gleamed with a crackling light energy. Gerde saw a crack in the horizon ahead, a little hole she could fit through if she folded her wings just so. Anse and Eike went ahead of her, and Gerde followed, allowing the warmth to envelope her, a promise, as she flew away from the mountain and the broken sound of her father’s voice.

    Watching the ribbon of the Thames pass below her, Alice tried to list all the things that might be able to crash a plane: clouds, hail, drones, flying saucers, lost balloons, the occasional bird. Starlings — she had heard that sometimes birds crashed planes, tumbling out of their sprawling flocks and into engines, everything halted with a blur and a puff of suspended feathers. She turned from the window, pushing the rough plastic shade as far down as it would go. Her hand fumbled for the silver button on her right armrest, and she slowly reclined her seat, a faint sigh issuing from the unseen passenger behind her. Looking at the white paneled ceiling, Alice eyed the no smoking sign with resentment. She had been clean for over a year now, doctor’s orders, but the little cigarette light still made her mouth feel strangely empty. Restless, she put her seat upright again, raising the window shade. The woman to Alice’s right re-adjusted her eye mask and turned away. Soon, Alice knew, they would pass over Brighton and the English Channel. She wondered if it was still light enough to see the starling murmurations by the pier. Pressing her hand against the cold plastic, Alice smiled to herself. She liked the idea of all those starlings flowing beneath her, safety in numbers, swarming in a patternless mass as though searching for a hidden blueprint. It had been almost exactly nine years since Alice’s last visit to Manchester Airport, though that time she had been the one fading into twilight, pale in the shadow of those great, metal wings. It suddenly occurred to Alice that she could not remember her soon to be son-in-law’s first name. She withdrew her hand from the window and reached for the rumpled magazine in the seat pocket in front of her, sure that something in there would jog her memory. The rest of the cabin seemed to be various stages of asleep. Across the aisle, a silver-haired man in a sweater vest drooled into his wife’s hair as she slept on his shoulder and he on her head. Alice had to loosen her seatbelt slightly but was pleased to find she could still reach the light button above her. Crossing her feet and quietly humming “New York State of Mind,” Alice flipped the magazine open to an article about ocean currents. Alone in her artificial sunbeam, she started reading, imagining that with each word she drifted farther across the Atlantic and closer to Sophie.     200 miles — it was the farthest from Sheffield Sophie had ever been. She had expected that they would take a bus to Brighton (they always took the bus), but just this once Alice had surprised her with a light blue train ticket, hole punches running down the sides like little tracks. For five hours now Sophie had been bouncing in her seat, watching various towns and rivers fly by to the rhythm of the engine. Half-timbered houses blurred together into one great, wooden checkerboard. Half 10th birthday present, it was the best Christmas holiday she could remember. Time passed with the aspen trees, and the brilliant white of the snowdrops outside the window faded as Sophie’s eyes slowly, slowly thudded shut.
    Sophie woke up to the acrid smell of cigarette smoke and a somewhat dodgy rental car. She bolted upright, pressing her hand to the car window. In gaps between the houses, Sophie spied a shimmering expanse of dark water. 
    “Is that the Celtic Sea, Mum?” Sophie imagined glimpsing rolling Irish hills from some stony beach.
    Alice took a long drag from her cigarette, then delicately balanced her wrist on the edge of the car window. “No, love. That’s the English Channel.”
    In Sophie’s mind, she swapped the green hills for French vineyards.
    “Can we swim in it, Mum?”
    Alice laughed, briefly taking her eyes off the road to smile at Sophie. Sophie held her breath to avoid the cloud of cigarette smoke that inevitably followed her mother’s smile. 
    “You can, love, but I don’t reckon you’ll want to.” Alice took another drag, gazing at a disheveled resort house as they drove toward the pier. “Not this time of year, anyway.”
    Sophie spent the rest of the drive looking at clouds and deciding if they looked more like jellyfish or parachutes. She had been to the North Sea several times because it was closer to Sheffield, but they never visited in summer because of the price difference, so Sophie had never swum there either. 
    As Alice parked, Sophie cracked the car door, holding the handle tightly as she inhaled the smells of salt and fried fish and sunscreen. She had imagined wading to the Channel through a sea of wild grass but instead found a line of houses where sand dunes should have been. She wondered if people could cannonball into the ocean from their balconies at high tide. 
    In a mere five minutes, Sophie was dipping her toes in the Channel. She tried to gasp at the cold, but found that she couldn’t make a sound, as if the Channel was gasping for her, foam sucking at her toes. 
    “Alright?” Alice grinned at Sophie. 
    “You’re right about swimming, Mum.” Sophie tip-toed back onto the beach, trying to dig herself a warm pocket of sand. Alice stepped into the ocean, walking until the water lapped at her ankles. 
    “Sophie, love, I think the Channel wants to say hello.” Alice whirled around, leaving one hand in the Channel so that Sophie was hit with a freezing wall of water. Shrieking, Sophie rushed to reciprocate, fumbling for handfuls of the rhythmic waves. After a minute, they both grew still and stared off into the distance. The sun was setting to the right, leaving a blinding trail in the water as if the star had been skipped to its current position. 
    “If we could swim out to that shiny part, Mum, would it be warm just there?”
    Alice cocked her head and eyed the golden trail. “Maybe, love.” She looked at Sophie with a sudden expression of gleeful mischief. “But we’re not going swimming today. We have other things to see.”
    Alice held out her hand, but Sophie had hardly reached for it when Alice snatched it away again. Alice crouched so that they were on the same level.
    “In two months, you will be 10 years old,” Alice whispered fiercely. “You’re getting all grown up on me. We’re about to go see something amazing, but first I need you to show me you can fly. Can you do that for me?”
    Sophie nodded, eyes wide. 
    Alice winked. “I’ll show you how it’s done, love.” With an inhuman shriek, she sprinted toward the pier, holding her arms out at her sides and dipping this way and that. She wheeled around and sprinted back, circling Sophie several times before coming to a gradual halt, flapping her arms a few more times for good measure. She grinned at Sophie. 
    “What do you think?”
    In response, Sophie gave a shrill cry of her own, running away as her mother gave chase. The sun continued to set, and Alice and Sophie took turns scaring couples on their evening beach walks. Panting, Alice stopped and picked up a shell.
    “Hello? Sophie, can you read me?” She changed her voice so that it sounded like a man from a black and white spy movie. “This is Alice, coming through on my shellphone. I request an immediate escort to the pier. Can anyone read me out there?”
    “I copy!” Sophie whirled around and skipped to join Alice. Taking Alice’s hand, she started dragging her toward the pier, making chirping sounds as they went.     
    “Sophie, have you ever seen a starling?” Alice asked. 
    Sophie frowned. “I dunno. I think, maybe? Are we going to see any tonight?”
    Alice playfully pulled at Sophie’s ponytail. “Love, you’ve no idea.”
    “Peanuts?” Sophie’s voice suddenly sounded much deeper and more insistent. “Peanuts?” she chirped. “Peanuts? Peanuts?”     “Peanuts?” the flight attendant asked Alice. Alice groggily rubbed her eyes and sat up, knocking her bag over on the floor with her foot as she shifted. She sighed. 
    “No, thank you,” she muttered, bending down to reach her bag. They had spilled out across the airplane floor, all 18 postcards (2 a year) and the wedding invitation. The woman next to Alice raised her eyebrows but said nothing, sleep mask very much gone. Alice tried not to feel guilty as she unceremoniously stuffed the cards back into her purse, realizing a moment later that she was missing a postcard. She glanced at her feet. Did you know there’s a Brighton in New York, too? Sophie’s handwriting asked her. Alice snatched the card and shoved it in with the rest. 
    “So you’re going to a wedding, huh?”     
    Alice started at the New York accent. “Um, yes. My daughter’s, actually.”
    The woman’s face scrunched up so tightly that Alice worried it might implode. “Aw, your daughter! I still remember marrying off my first. She thought I was overbearing with my flower suggestions and all, but she liked them in the end. Oh, did you cry when you saw her in the dress?” The woman bit her lip.
    Alice opened her mouth to respond that no, she hadn’t actually seen the bride-to-be in nearly a decade, but the woman was already going again.
    “And oh my gosh the vows, the music, the sermon!” She sympathetically placed a hand on Alice’s arm. “It’s gonna kill you, it really will.” 
    The woman leaned back and looked up at the fasten seatbelt sign, shaking her head. “And then, of course, you’ll keep thinking of how she’s a Mrs. now. It’s the strangest thing. You have the actual event photos on your bedside table, but the strangest part is that every time you go to write her a letter, you have to white out the “Ms.” or try squeezing a little “r” in there somewhere. Of course, you’re sure you’ll just remember next time, but you won’t, you really won’t.” 
    The woman looked back at Alice and smiled. “Is this your first?”
    Alice cleared her throat, trying to avoid direct eye contact. “It’s my only.”
    Again, the woman’s face threatened to implode as she gave a squeal of delight. 
    “Oh, your little baby! Well isn’t that just wonderful. Oh, it really is. So you did cry when you saw the dress, then? I’ve heard it’s so much more emotional with only children. Is it true? Do you think it’s harder for you?”
    Alice stared at the woman, at a loss for words. “I really couldn’t say,” she finally sighed.
    “Oh, but you’re being modest,” the woman mused. “Of course it’s harder, how could it not be? You know, when I got married, my mother told me —”
    “Excuse me,” Alice said firmly. “I need to use the restroom.”
    “The fasten seatbelt sign is on,” the woman objected importantly. 
    “So is my bladder.” 
    The woman pursed her lips, pulling her feet in so Alice could get into the aisle. Alice walked briskly and didn’t look back. When one of the bathroom stalls opened up, Alice locked herself in with a sigh of relief. She hated talking about Sophie. She pressed the faucet to turn the sink on, splashing the too-hot water on her face. She wondered if Sophie went to many New York beaches. The faucet automatically turned off, and Alice irritably pressed it again. 18 postcards and one wedding invitation in exchange for an annual Christmas card - and the kind without a picture. She took a deep breath and pressed her forehead against the dirty mirror as she exhaled. 
    “Alice, you idiot,” she muttered. She looked in the mirror. “You are going to pretend to sleep in your seat for the next three hours, and then you are going to escort your favorite marine biologist down the aisle, and that’s that.” 
    Alice started to unlock the door. “Carlos! Good God.” She slid the lock, making a mental note to write down her son-in-law’s name as soon as she was back in her seat.     Sophie and Alice lay flat on their backs above the uneven wooden slats of the pier, shoulders pressed together like two girls at a sleepover. Only a breath of sunlight was left now, and the starlings were beginning to stir. Then all at once, they were in the air, forming one fluid shadow that seemed to twist and stretch, a scarf, blowing, knotting in the wind. 
    “It’s lovely,” Sophie breathed. In the darkness, it was easy to forget about the other spectators, and Alice imagined that it was just the two of them, the pier, the Channel, and the starlings. As if the wood had splintered where the pier connected to the beach, and the structure had simply floated off with the current and the shipping boats. As if it was an island all to itself, isolated and cozy and alive. As if they didn’t have a train to catch that same night.
    The only sound was a strange rustling like hands rifling through straw. Alice found Sophie’s hand and squeezed. 
    “See, this is why we practiced flying,” she whispered. “We needed to be able to appreciate the technique.” 
    In response, the starlings rotated like pinwheels, a dozen flying saucers hovering over Brighton Beach in the dead of winter. 
    “Imagine if all these rustling noises are whispers. What if starlings are merely great gossips? See, I bet they fly all around like that because they’re excited by their own rumors.” Alice paused. “Did you see those humans flying earlier?” she asked in her highest voice. “I think they’ve discovered our secret!”
    Sophie fake gasped. “Golly, Petunia, you’re right!” She collapsed into a fit of giggles, then suddenly grew very quiet. 
    “I don’t want to be home again tomorrow.”
    Alice searched the starlings for a response. “You’re not going home alone, love.”      “Welcome to New York, folks,” the overhead announcement blared. Alice raised her window shade, giving up on her sleep facade. The Big Apple loomed beneath her. The Empire State Building was a domino she could flick over with her pinky finger if she so chose. In the dark, the city was lit up by thousands of tiny lights, some moving, some flickering, some steady. It reminded Alice of one of Sophie’s calls. She had been talking all about microorganisms and bioluminescence, how sometimes a person could rake their fingers through ocean water and leave moondust in their wake. Alice imagined the plane turning, its tip grinding into the ground, all the sparks and lights and fire. She thought of stony beaches and loopy handwriting and imagined a combination of the two, the strangeness of addressing a card from Brighton Beach to some distant Mrs. Alice turned away from the window and fumbled in her purse for the wedding invitation. It had an underline in the form of a wave, and Alice traced it with her fingernail, wondering about the flower arrangements. She looked out the window again and imagined starlings converging in the air beside the plane, speckled wings alarmingly close and stunningly delicate. The birds seemed undeterred by the danger of the situation, falling into their familiar flow, stretching as a flock like saltwater taffy. Alice closed her eyes, banishing the imagined birds. Lord, I don’t want this plane to crash.

In the second century a.d., depression is 
simple and concrete. You have too much 
black bile. Each humor has its own 
element. Melancholy, dear, is too much 
earth: picture a pitch-black hollow 
under miles of rock. Are you comfortable 
with leeches? Do you prefer a simple cut? That’s it, bleed 
into the cup. You never realized how much weight you carried 
in your veins. It stings a little, but this will fix you, 
imagine filling that hollow with something like confidence. Melancholy, 
properly removed, cannot be 
replenished in the body. If it comes back, you did not 
do it right the first time. Bloodletting, you see, is a bit of an art. Best 
to leave it to the professionals. Believe me, dear, you cannot fill yourself 
on your own. Better to get it done once and for all 
here in this office. See, this is the right way 
out. It would be selfish of you, really, to refuse. Look 
into your mother’s eyes. Blue. Can you see the Melancholy 
creeping in? It seeps out of you, it drowns her 
with every kiss, it burns her in the heat of your fingertips. Take 
the pill. Read the packet. Get the gold star. We will check you 
off a list and hand you a copy. You will peel 
the check-mark off the paper, sharpen it 
to a glistening point, clench it in your fist 
in your sleep. Will check for Melancholy under the bed, behind 
the dresser, lurking somewhere in the bathroom mirror. Your parents 
will say things like congratulations and we’re proud of you and so glad to see you 
happy again. You are afraid of cutting yourself 
on a corner. You’ll say things like glad to be happy again and can I have a room 
with rounded walls, please? At night you’ll stare 
at the ceiling and try not to envision boulders, flinch 
when rainstorms sound like pebbles 
on the roof. If dust trickles down, remind yourself 
that you’ve already learned how to shoulder this cave.

It must have been difficult to live, in the shadow 
of the Iya Valley. Wisteria vine bridges no use 
to you, no, better to drift along the Iya River with mere dreams 
of those purple blossoms, better if the rapids guide you 
to Nagoro. Emerald cedar trees cascade down 
the mountains — Nagoro is a handful of dry bamboo 
in a rainforest, silent, save the rustling carried on the Wind. A woman 
sits contentedly with her kakashi, hand full 
of splintered straw, keeping 
it from the Wind’s grasp. Wind is passage, loss, time. She does not care 
for these things, prefers cotton-headed stick figures 
to gravestones. The village is so quiet, she can hear 
her thoughts breathing life into the dry wood. Dolls 
dance by Japanese moonlight while she takes measured sips 
of green tea, urns remain empty in her memory. It is funny 
to her when she speaks it into the waiting mountain 
air — temporary preservation. Flesh made wood 
and straw and fabric, same decay, same snow, 
wind, rain. Come monsoon season, she shuts herself 
inside and watches as they are reclaimed, water gathers 
kakashi and hut alike. Come dry season, she will remake 
them, close her eyes, block out the gurgling 
of the garden fountains for a moment and think. This face 
in her mind, it was a person and that person 
knew what it was to know her, maybe 
grazed the back of that artist’s hand once, told her 
the callouses felt like cedarwood. As children, 
they spoke of shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. To be 
at once in the valley and of the valley and for the valley, careful, 
do not stop walking or you might grow roots. And now she had 
returned to Nagoro, gazing at the newest monsoon 
the Wind had to offer, watching replications 
of friends and family drift off to who 
knew where, perhaps a more lively portion 
of the Kii Channel. She felt the brittleness setting 
in, hair stiffening to white straw in the absence 
of someone else’s fingers, spine straightening, single 
wooden rod. Straw in hand no longer foreign but a long-
forgotten caress, bones of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

    When I was little, five or six maybe, my parents taught me how to use the speaker system in our house. It worked with an old cassette tape player, and my favorite song by far was Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major.” Spring afternoons took on a repetitive structure. I crept into the stereo closet, fumbling with the player to make sure it was holding the right cassette. Then I pushed down the black rectangle with that little beckoning play button. Then I was gone, dancing through our living room as though I were an Olympic figure skater, my fuzzy blue socks my skates. The windows along the back of our house flooded the living room with light, especially as the sun began to set. The glass glowed amber in the sun’s rays, almost as if the star itself was pressed against the other side of the glass, drawn in by the music. The TV armoire that dominated the room had fancy tassels hanging on each knob, the only gold-colored thread I had ever seen. The way they framed that armoire made it seem like a curtain, and I felt like I was dancing to an infinite theater, facing the open marsh and fading sky through the windows to my backyard. I was a terrible dancer in the way all little kids who love music really are, flinging my arms here and there and fancying myself a ballerina. The 40-year-old couch was my springboard, its purpose to launch me back into the air like a bottle rocket. I turned the music up too loud, but my parents never complained. They would quietly go turn it down themselves, and I hardly noticed in the midst of my wild spins and waltzes with invisible wood nymphs. Pachelbel seemed to dance with me, and I think that those crazed sunny afternoons with him set my standard for what good music should be: it should make people who can’t dance into maniacs, pirouetting like dreidels across wooden floors. It should turn tables into pedestals and walls into horizons. It should make little kids stop for a moment and sit in wonder and whisper to themselves, I’m going to play that someday soon. And they believe it. Their eyes hold symphonies.
I stood looking at the urn, playing with my hands, folding one set of fingers into my palm and then the other. I had never been this close to death before. The room was chilly, and I hugged my shoulders a little closer into my chest. I did not know my grandmother well, or at all, really. Early-onset Alzheimer’s had snatched up most of her by the time my memory developed properly, like a child with a package of cookies. You say you’ll save some for later, but you never do. 
    I’m told my grandmother was an incredible woman. You would have loved her, my family says. Loved her. She was tall and slender, athletic and strong. I look at old pictures and can see from her smile that this woman was one of those rare people who grabs life by the ear and drags it along, full of confidence and purpose. There is one picture in particular that bothers me. It sits in the family room near the base of the stairs, so I pass by it every time I go up or down the steps. It’s a picture of my mom, my dad, my sister, and me along with my grandparents. And my Nana is right there, just behind my sister. It was taken on a beach during a family vacation, and the wind is blowing at her hair so that it flies out of its neat bob like swooping contrails, like little bits of her mind are already flaking away. She is so close, so near to me in that photo that if she sneezed she would bump into me, and I imagine she would reach for my shoulder, steady herself with a laugh. When I look at the picture now I am filled with frustration, frustration that this woman who should have been a fundamental part of my childhood was standing next to me. Frustration that I cannot remember her laugh, the smell of her lotion. I cannot remember if she ever did put her hand on my shoulder, and I cannot remember the breeze that moves both of our hair in the picture. I am the one who cannot remember.
    As a child, I was not a fan of annual piano recitals. I didn’t see the point. If it was a matter of my parents ensuring that the lessons were paying off, or if they just wanted a few more childhood videos, I figured they could just as easily listen to me play at home in our office, where there was a soft, wine-colored rug underfoot and a black office chair that swivelled to face the piano. Instead, our car rolled up to my piano teacher’s remote church, and I played Beethoven to the murals of Bible stories that covered the walls. Sitting in front of all those people, it felt like the book of Revelations really could be lurking around any corner. Every wrong note seemed like an air horn, and fumbling over the rhythm, even for a second, would bring the temple crashing down. The parents watching probably hardly noticed these little mistakes, but that really wasn’t the point. Any musical piece as a whole can only be played one way according to the sheet music. If you choose to vary from the music and take artistic license, fine, but if you’re sticking to it, you’d better do everything exactly right. Otherwise you play a lie. Intricate things like music are meant to function in a perfect, coordinated system. If one note, one web, one fiber, is off, then the whole system disintegrates from the inside out.
I thought I could hear rain outside but knew that this was only my own mind trying to fill itself. It was raining, but so softly that you would only hear it if you bothered to lay down and press your cheek against the pavement. What I did hear was the unobtrusive music that marks a funeral, soft piano notes that are only meant to give your mind something to grab onto if you find yourself in a corner alone. I tapped my fingers on my thigh to match the music, pretending the soft fabric of my dress was in reality the cold plastic of piano keys. As I played this silent melody, I looked at the urn again and wondered how it was that I knew almost nothing about the woman inside it.
    I started taking piano lessons when I was five or six years old. My first teacher was a strict man with wild gray sideburns and an iron back by the name of Mr. Murphey. He had me drill the same songs over and over again until they reached his level of perfection. I had to learn to keep rhythm, first by counting aloud and then by silently tapping my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I settled on a happy medium where I mouthed the numbers silently to myself. 1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah. If you stood close to me, maybe you could hear the faintest whisper. 1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah. I love the way we hold rhythm inside ourselves like secrets, hardly recognizing their presence as they give us the ability to breathe, to think, to move. If I feel for my pulse while listening to music, I wonder at the fact that these notes and chords can change the pace of the human heart. When I play piano, I listen to the dull thunk of the keys when I push them down, not quite masked by the note that follows. When played in perfect timing, they sound like drums, and I imagine they are beating on the inside of my ribcage, straining to get back to their source.
    As a 10-year-old, I was acutely aware of the delicate state of my brain. I had heard that thousands of brain cells died when you hit your head on the bottom of a bunk bed, I had heard that brain cells were the only cells in the human body that could never regenerate, and I lived in constant fear that every time I watched television I was slowly killing myself from the inside out. I had once seen a commercial for Sharpie highlighters claiming that watching too much TV could cause brain cell loss. Always know when to stop, it advised. Most of all, I learned to fear the human brain by watching my grandmother. Diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at only 57, she was dead by the time I was 11. By the time my brain had developed enough to retain detailed memories, she had lost the power of speech. The thought that my voice might disappear terrified me. Did it vanish all at once? Or was it a slow, muddled disappearance, like clouds clearing out in July?
    I wonder what I heard in my mother’s womb, and if I would recognize it and be transported back to that living cave if I were to hear it again now. Parents have long been told to play music for their babies. I wonder if my mother passed her pregnancy listening to Bach, to Tchaikovsky, or even to Fleetwood Mac. My parents have always recognized the emotional effect music has on me. When I had a nightmare or was afraid to sleep in the dark, my mother’s cure was to sit with me in our tattered, blue and white checkered rocking chair and to sing to me. I still remember every lyric. I’ll never understand the priority the brain seems to place on music, the fact that I remember my childhood lullabies but not elementary school, lyrics to old Taylor Swift songs but not learning to ride my bike. I wonder if in my old years I will be the same, remembering the anthems of my high school years but not the people I sang them with.
    When my family visited my grandmother in the nursing home I found myself constantly frustrated by our inability to communicate. I could never really tell if she registered exactly what I was saying, but her laugh was clear and beautiful and should have been contagious. It came out of nowhere and with no explanation, and I would sit and writhe in the injustice that no one in the world could understand what it was she found so amusing. I knew humor was often what patched families together, skipping over rough spots like a stone over water. I thought that if I could just understand my Nana’s joke, we could be a family again.
    Of all the aspects of piano, sight reading is by far the most difficult for me. I know the notes in the sheet music, I understand the rhythms, but the expectation to put everything together in a single try is overwhelming to me. I fumble through the music, lacking the clarity and grace that seems to come so easily to my teacher. I have always lacked confidence in the future, and my strategy has been to cement myself in the present. I run through things I have already done, like music pieces, perfecting them as best as I can and somehow hoping it is enough. My first try is never, never good enough. When I learn a new piece of music, I anticipate the discordance that is certain to come, and I already pass a judgment on myself.
    There is a very particular type of Alzheimer’s that runs in my family. It is called familial Alzheimer’s disease, and it has been linked to three specific genes in the human body. This means that I could be tested, my sister could be tested, my father could be tested; we would already know who to begin the scrapbooks for. The thing about early-onset Alzheimer’s is that symptoms develop before the patient has reached retirement age, in their 50s and sometimes even 40s. By the time you retire, you might not remember your granddaughter’s name. 
    The piano repeat sign is rarely a welcome sight in sheet music. Upright it consists of a colon followed by a double bar line, but sideways it looks like a little face with a wide, gaping mouth. It means that you must repeat whatever section of the music you have just finished. It means you are stuck in a loop. You already know the story that will ring out in the air, but you have to play it anyway. You hope that you will play better the second time through, but really you are just waiting for the second ending, which is always slightly different from the first. It is marked by a neat little half box with the number 2 in the upper left corner. It means you have finished with the repeated section of music, that you will finally create something new and exciting. If you liked that section, though, if you loved it just a little, it means goodbye. You will only hear it again once the song is over, once you have restarted the whole piece.
    I knew my great-grandmother better than her daughter. My Mimi had to watch both her daughter (my Nana) and her husband succumb to Alzheimer’s before dementia took pity and moved in on her as well. During my family’s visits to her nursing home, I finally witnessed the portion of my Nana’s disease that I had been too young to remember. Mimi would go back and forth between my sister and me, asking the same two questions: And how old are you now? and What grade is that? When she had finished with one great-granddaughter she turned to the other, going back and forth, completely unaware of the cyclic nature of her movements. On one Sunday visit, I saw her disappear for the first time. Mimi began her usual questioning, but this time she added someone new to the rotation. Turning to my father, she pleasantly asked, “And what grade are you in, young man?”
    My dad was at a loss for words. His eyes seemed to ask a question as they darted to the rest of my family, wondering perhaps if he could have imagined the scenario. At first I wanted to laugh. The silver strands entwined into my dad’s rough black hair were proof enough that he was well past his schooling years. It took me a moment to realize that the real reason my dad was so upset was that his grandmother didn’t know who he was. She was smiling at him, but in the polite way you smile at a family member’s date: kind, but not overly familiar.
    My dad laughed, shrugging the incident off. “I finished up school a long time ago. They don’t have grades for guys as old as I am.” All at once the hilarity of the situation flooded back into the room like a breath of wind, and we all began to laugh. Recognition filled Mimi’s eyes again and she began to laugh as well, realizing her mistake. When the laughter died, my dad’s eyes stayed glued to my Mimi’s for the rest of the visit, as if by witnessing the familiarity in them he could keep it there.
    There have been numerous studies regarding the connection between music and memory. Patients in nursing homes who can barely recall their children’s names can sometimes sing along to entire songs from decades ago, the lyrics cemented somewhere deep inside their minds. I don’t understand what it is about music that captivates the brain. People can sometimes relive memories they forgot they had simply because a certain song came on the radio. It reminds me a little of a record collector, dusting off a forgotten album and putting the vinyl onto the player just to hear that one song again. Maybe that’s all the brain is: an old man listening to his favorite record as he rocks in his chair and peers out the window. I can’t shake the idea that perhaps if I happen upon the right song, my memories of my grandmother will come flooding back. It’s as if my time with her was a movie, and I’m trying to recover the score. Maybe if the right song comes on the radio while I’m driving one night, my brain will reclaim its role as translator and will quietly twist the sound waves into memories, and the car will briefly hold an echo. I don’t know how realistic that is, but sometimes when I look at my Nana’s picture it’s all I can think about.
    At my grandmother’s funeral, I found myself camped out in front of the slide show. The background music was set up to coordinate with the slides, and I pictured the pedals of the piano as it played. The sustain pedal, the right pedal, causes a note to ring until the pedal is released, regardless of whether or not you continue to hold down the key. Gazing at a picture of my grandmother playing baseball, blue eyes flashing a challenge and the slender bat shining in her hand, I wondered about these women. About my grandmother, my great-grandmother, even my great-great-grandmother; if they were not the same. I wondered at how, generations later, I am still looking into their eyes and hearing their voices through the voices of others. How I am still listening to the melody long after their fingers have come to rest between silent boards of mahogany. I imagine two clean, black lines stretched across sheet music, two dots guarding them like sentries. Repeat. Tell me again.

I envy you — your missing 
arms, how the tip of your nose has broken off. Beautiful 
even in your desolation, weeds winding 
up alabaster legs like the sea foam you first rose from. Goddess, 
grant me grace in the absence of wholeness, teach me 
a my-arms-are-missing-but-you-will-adore-me composure. 

I do not have an enchanted girdle or belt 
or even a pencil pouch that can make me irresistible. I need you 
to hold my hand as I rise, topless, from the water, need your fingers 
to lift my chin when my critical eyes drift downward. Fix them 
on your planet, let me be your first satellite. 

Yours is the hottest world in the solar system, monument to the infinite 
woman, desire chased down and compressed into volcanic rock, perfect 
Greek curves carved into the surface. Did it hurt when you burned 
yourself smooth? You are the pinnacle, unattainable 
fire, held at bay by light-years I cannot see. 

But I do not pray 
to that Aphrodite. No, I pray to a goddess crafted 
with human hands, find hope in the fact that her boobs are lopsided. 
When Pygmalion fell 
in love with his own statue, 
you brought her to life. Do miracles ever happen 
the same way twice? I can’t draw, but I can write. If I write you 
a shape poem, will you give him lungs, can you make him 
three-dimensional and witty and flesh? If I asked, would you build me 
a companion from scratch, craft him from a handful of dust 
or snow or wood chips or shredded paper cups or recycled plastic? 
If not, please stay up all night writing me fanfiction. 
Record the love I do not know to describe.

I don’t know how honest this prayer is. I look at you and can’t help 
but wonder what kind of goddess 
is sculpted shorter than a foot, why I have spent 
the last several years expecting you to answer. Why I want you 
to. Maybe a better use of my time would be to slam you against my headboard 
until you crumble into fragments that I can smooth 
into skipping stones. Maybe when I hurl you back 
into the water, I’ll wait until the surface stills, revel 
in how it is unmarred, peaceful. But 
when my hand registers its emptiness, I’ll kneel 
again at the water’s edge, fumble for another stone.