L'ORPHELINE SAUVAGE

Some days the lake eats your face. Some days the car eats the key. Other days you deposit ten minutes of sob into a trash can. Your childhood home will not be yours again. You won’t walk out of those woods you wish you never entered. Much of your early adulthood, and mine, was coming up with innovative ways to vomit, and then innovative ways not to vomit. My roommate holds my face steady, pushes the earplug in with a flick, like fake eyelashes. Fans my waterlogged childhood books on the fire escape, pausing to flip through the one with owls in tight sweaters. I’m in a striped cotton dress without shoes or a bra. Maybe it’s evening. Tankard of Pedialyte. Ghost cat stepping across my chest. Everything inside burns. You have to remember this was back when we had to take cabs, so we take a cab. My roommate tells me the bangle bracelet is a Sea-Band. Puts a wig over my hair and an all-day sucker in my hand, like going to a rave. Jams my heels into heels. Drags my heels into the cab. When we reach my childhood home, which probably looks very much like yours, we realize we brought nothing to throw. So I throw my voice around every tree, into the chimney my father built, across the yard where my ghost dog still ghosts.

—longing for love