The house is on the lake. Georgia pine with large stone fireplaces. There are trees–balsam all around it and the lawn is not a lawn at all but a carpet of needles. There is an old piano and a study lined with books and a long covered porch. In the kitchen there is a pantry, and a long ceramic counter. There is a screen door that squeaks. There is an upstairs with many rooms and sometimes there is the low, sweeping sound of bat wings at night. The bathrooms have clawfooted tubs and sinks that are cool to the touch. And always it is dark inside and it smells like a memory of childhood summers.

The birds are not quiet today. The cold will not stop their singing. Yesterday, a dead finch on the road–a red head and a small tongue sticking out its beak. It was sadder than sad.

There is a cold spot on my cheek as if someone is here with me. Are you here with me? I keep feeling it. Is it your cool hand on my cheek? Can you answer me?

I stop to let you type but all I see is the sun through the slats of the shade on my fingers. The sun on my fingers.

Your void is endless. It is the black of the beginning. It is that nothingness.

A man with an axe running across the street. What is he going to do with that axe?

A man outside a window. He is wearing a white suit, a pink shirt a tie, and he is looking up and waving at me. This was in a dream.

Do you like to party? A man asked at a gas station. I got in my car and locked the doors. I drove away. Afterwards, I thought about how I could have gone with him. How I could have died.

At the end of the night I would mop up the piss on the floor of the men’s room. The water was black with dirt, ash, beer, blood.

Soccer. The sun is shining and we run and we run and we run. I don’t want the game to end. The exhilaration and the fear of it. I want to be good at it. I want to be the girl who scores a goal and gets her name in the paper but I never am. I’m the one who tries really, really hard.

The sky is gray today. I can’t hear any birds because there is rain coming and they have sought shelter. There is no sun through slats on my hands today. I can see the blue house cut up into slices. Bottom, middle, middle, middle, top. And the thing is I don’t even know who lives there. There’s a truck and a pink bicycle and the people–I don’t know their names.