Dad works near a lake and I pack pieces of bread for him to feed pigeons during his breaks. Mom cleans the kitchen. I practice roller skating on our white rug floors, when I take them out to the driveway to test my skills, I fall and skin my knees. A blood trail to the front door. I stained our carpet, it caused a fight because mom wants wooden floors for precisely this reason. She can’t stop sneezing. She puts me to sleep and I watch her leave and yellow light floods my room for an instant. Dad says she goes to work in a library, she’s taking a class. I think she goes to the woods and dances. I say something about it. I’ve followed her to the woods only once. I saw her. I think mom gets fun at night. I fell asleep in some leaves at the back of the house and snuck back into the window for morning shower.

I can tie my laces. Dad lost his smell. I believe in myself on my first day of the school year, and I notice two teachers talking in the parking lot during quiet reading and meditation time. I saw a child take a shit in the middle of the bathroom floor. It shook me to my core so much I stayed in the open tool shed for the rest of the day. They couldn’t find me, then they found me. I think I was yelled at. Dad picked me up and we fed birds while he smoked. I’ve been to a cold city only once and when I breathed, I breathed hot air like dads smoke, and that felt good. I have good posture and I know how to sew, but not in a straight line. I’m graduating soon and I’ll be off to a different school on a yellow bus. It is meditation and quiet reading for the last time. We move next summer.

I am in high school and the female teacher who talks to Mr. died. I talk to him after school and in the evening. I write him letters and read the books I need to, so I can talk to him more. Mr. was transferred. He tried to convince my mother to let him give me writing and comprehension lessons at his house alone. My mom said no. I don’t know why. Mom left a tool with his name on it on the kitchen table. I didn’t move it and she put it away. I can leave after couscous and spinach to meet with K. I came back home bleeding. Mom set our picnic table on fire by mistake while her friends were over. I don’t understand what this means. I don’t know what she does. As long as she does it I can keep doing what I want to do and that is good for me. She doesn’t discipline. Dad picks me up from school with an opened bag of chocolate and gifts me an iron fish because iron is good for women. I say thank you and everything is filtered through my restlessness to see K. The house is empty most nights and there is little to talk about. Nothing is clean and nothing gets made. I don’t read. The police come to the door because a cat has hiked up the tree in our front yard. K loves me and mom smells like a bonfire and has lost all her friends. Dad gets a girlfriend and she’s the female teacher who I thought died. She is attractive and K tells me he thinks so too. They both run off together. Dad and I get broken up and we get sad. I see dad less and I am done with high school. I am no longer into any of that stuff and I move to a cold city and live normally. I am regretful and I talk to a room of people about it each week. I join classes. I make companions, and make love to normal people, very normally. I make my apartment bed and hang up clothes on hangers, who hang on the frieze of my wall, to dry. Mom dies, her funeral is big. I don’t really know any of these people except dad. I pick up smoking. I pass dad a piece so we both have bread to feed the birds.

This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.