Every kind of person will kill every other kind of person in every kind of way, says the man who invented the noose and cannot remember why. Simply because they can, and there is time.

They act as if they had never heard the question before. The what? they say. The air? What about it? We smile and rephrase the question. What does the air feel like to you, you being a bird, able to fly and all? Finally they seem to understand, and they meditate on this awhile. And then they begin: The air to us is a brother, a sister. We are intrigued, and lean in closer. The air, they continue, now quieter. We lean in yet farther. They peck us in the eye and laugh wickedly. Birds are bastards, every one of them.

She has never remembered, with any clarity, the pain she suffered between her legs or in her limbs—the memory of physical pain is so fleeting; thus women who bear multiple children—but the pain of lies, the pain of insults, of treachery, abandonments, these pains can come back to her, years or decades later, with incredible clarity. And they do, they do, they do! They lunge at her, with no shame about being so old; they have a permanent and exaggerated sense of their own importance.

dead december lake

3. There are bears and there are small dogs. Be strong like bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs!

I was trying to think, and was shielding my eyes from the new sun, low and screaming at me,…

I would go get more food but I’d be soaked and then would catch something and lord knows where the closest hospital is, and will the doctors there be wearing shoes? I can’t take that chance.

Anyway, in both Auckland-area malls I entered—the first didn’t have a stationery store or anything approximating or inclusive of one—there were barefoot shoppers. Whole families of barefoot shoppers! It was fucked up. I was jubilant but perplexed.

They were falling straight, like rain. I could barely breathe. I was sucking air out of tiny crushed lungs. Lungs the size of thumbs. My lids shut and I went out again.

She listened to Hand’s tale of hiding his dead cat in his room, when he was seven, to prevent it from being buried. He couldn’t stand the idea of burying anything, and so first put the cat in an old Lego box, but ants took over swarming, so he later cut open the belly of a stuffed bear and kept the cat’s stiff decomposing body inside the bear’s stomach, above his dresser, until the smell, in August, was too dense and he was found out.

But for me, with my mom here, and them here, it was the collision of worlds and every sip confused me.

I was exhausted. You should sleep. Wake up early. That’s not the way. It’s the same. It means less that way. We sleep when we fall. We only sleep when we can’t move anymore. That’s juvenile. But it means everything. It’s the illusion of progress. Staying awake isn’t progress. The illusion is enough.

My chin hit the wood and then I saw the quick swirl of sky then wailed backward and my back struck the pavement and I saw the sun and was still.

I turned around. I couldn’t watch. I walked a few steps toward the car, wanting nothing to do with Hand. What kind of person brings his soda? You’re giving $300 to people in a shack and you bring your soda? Nothing we did ever resembled in any way what we’d envisioned. Maybe we couldn’t help but make a mess everywhere we went—

I was a looker—someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back—always everyone looking forward, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look over at you? Why would they care?