Laura would tell people I was out of line. She would say I started hurling insults at the driver, calling him  insolent, negligent. Now, he did pull up to the curb fast and she had been sort of twirling absentmindely. Or not really twirling but like rocking you know which she had normally done sometimes to self soothe anyway. But I was watching her. But I was also trying to look up urgent care.The bumper may have grazed her. But not hard. I feel like as he pulled up, she stepped into the curb. I don’t remember any of this. I remember bleeding through my shirt. Or, sweating through my shirt but I saw blood. Laura said I was crazy.
She accused me of calling her crazy and pushed me when I let her o,ut of the second Lyft. I wanted to help her up the stairs. She has three flights. When I tried to dial the doctor, she leaned over and whispered, girl, don’t do it. I’ll send them to you.
I vaguely remember a veiled threat at someone, finger wagging, the pretzel girl maybe but Laura said I told the Lyft driver to back the fuck up and watch your life move into wither like a clock turning backwards  which I said sounded “beautiful” though everyone at the party agreed it made no sense. I repeated it to myself in the mirror that night.
Laura will tell people I shivered nonstop and sweat through my tee shirt. That I threw my sweat shirt on the ground outside of the car and left it. That I dropped my luggage twice and finally left it. That she made the Lyft wait then ran after me to pick it up. She will tell people I embraced her suddenly but I remember only a bare wrist touching rime, spurning rhyme to catch it; the clock being reset to ruin itself before wither, touching frost and then falling fast into it.
Some days I can’t look in the mirror at all. In fact, some days I tape them all up. Wrap a sheet around them and tape the four corners and leave them like I’m packing them up. Then, when night finally comes, I unwrap a corner and peek and if it’s pleasant enough, I will keep going. Before I left, I had covered all the mirrors. I suffer from epidodic dysphoria and won’t look at my face for days. Even in summer when I am ripe and freckled to perfection, it’s too much. My coordination was off so I crawled up the stairs leaving my bag in the lobby excited to return to this hole.
“No need.”
Paying attention also to what I was saying out loud.
No need.
Needsss.
The first to plunge was the bone-white wrist and had it not been nearly frozen, heavy on the nearly as I suspected from first dare, I would have felt the ice tear the skin like broken glass but instead
Needsss.
I crawled up the stairs. Gruesome. Thankful, no one opened their door to help. It took minutes. Possibly fifteen or more to reach the top. Normally, two minutes total unless I am lugging wooden furniture which is all I have: antique, used, like the mirror. The carnival mirror I call he4r. Someone else’s vision piercing mine. I need the mirror.
“I need the mirror.”

Laura will say somberly, she had no idea of her own power. Or beauty.The apartment slanted to the right which was usual but today it had more of a tilt to it, like one of those moving walkways in the funhouse. The first thing I did was exclaim, close! The second thing I did was vomit on the kitchen linoleum, but not the carpet! was the second thing I exclaimed. The third thing I did was lie on the bedroom floor and let the cat walk on my face and contritely murmur sorry softly, tenderly, the only love being exchanged for miles.
When I was up again, it was dark. My cat had pissed next to me out of spite.
Katarina
“Katarina!”
I hopped up pleased to discover the proper spelling. A wind passed through me. I went to the cupboard and opened five wet cans and placed them near Genevieve’s bowl.
“Don’t eat it all at once,” I whispered and pat her head.
I got up to walk towards the side room; the room with the carnival dresser and the altar and noticed I never closed the front door. A lucid thought passed about my baggage but then a deep undulation passed up my spine cracking me in half so I was face down and shaking. And my forearm slid through the water with my bleeding wrist passing up my tricep and shoulder and in vain, the right arm gripped the top of the ice as if I had a chance.
“But you will do it.”
“But I can’t do it.”
“But you will.”
And she took her boot away.