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I went from being a frozen tundra:
algid, wide and growing fields of
ground to cover with
no visible tracks to follow
unless the wind was kind and left
the prints
which it wasn’t often.

“preface”

Right before it hit, I was at my most lucid. I had begun guessing with a 98.4% accuracy. I knew I was off about a couple of things but I felt secure in what I did know

1.The bugs that had descended the trees had all frozen so I didn’t have to worry about killing them.
2. The streetlights were out on almost every block.
3. I use intimidation as a tactic to seize opportunity.

I was in the center of Spruce hidden by a heavy snowfall. The ground was soft and white like powder. You could not hear the snow hit. You could not hear my steps.
I was in front of a house with two candles in the window and walking fast towards the knob. I’m sure if you could slow down time and cast the second of decisiveness like a projector onto a screen, you would see me praying under my breath. But what he and I will remember is the knowingness in which I swung the door open. I doubt I can recount the name I said with complete honesty but the feeling of being a wrecking ball, that never goes away.
“I am being followed,” I said putting my withered, gloveless right hand up, dropping the chewed plastic straw on the ground. “ I am sorry for the intrusion. I am being followed and I am almost out of food.” I closed the knob with the left,“I have no weapon or means to harm you.”
My hands hurt. My knuckles hurt.
We eyed each other like that in his foyer. He was no more than 5” 11’ and center to the door upon entry like he had been watching it. I made myself smaller in his presence. Where I may have stood 5” 8’ to someone else, I stood 5” 5’ and shrinking. Where I may have held my chin up at someone else, I lowered my head. Where I may have begun to pick the straw back up in a time of more comfort, I bowed and stayed there.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your family?”
“My parents are dead.”
“Your friends?”
I looked up.
“I don’t have many and if they had intended to check on me, the storm made it harder. I just moved here.”
“I don’t have much,” he said.
“Sir, with all due respect, I can tell you have more than me.”
I did not budge.
“How did you get in?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Fuck,” he turned his head to the left.
He was squarely in his forties, divorced, and might possibly have children. He was handsome, wearing a sweater, khakis, looked like he was still preparing to go to work. Like he hadn’t assumed his elderly parents dead like I had. Like he was living in a fantasy. He had great hair too, brown, thick, long.
“I went out earlier,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out at dark. It’s getting more dangerous out there.”
“Well,” I didn’t move any closer. “I have a cat. I need to return to her. The stores are barricaded and the gas stations have been cleaned out.”
“This area is being patrolled.”
“Well, they didn’t stop me from walking this far and I can’t leave empty handed.”
He shifted uncomfortably.
“What’s your cat’s name?”
“Genevieve,” I said without blinking. “She is all I have left.”
I hadn’t moved from the front door. He hadn’t invited me in. We stood squared liked that. Audibly, he sighed. Suddenly, I wished for something else.  Like a bomb or my Gigi, my security blanket I slept with until I was fifteen. I knew it was a long shot but I asked.
“Do you have any cat food, at least?”
“You know they just cut the gas line?”
Forget about the bath.
“No.”
We stayed like that, squared. Me, uncomfortable and cold in black combat boots and jeans. Him, dressed for dentist appointment. Looking past me, at the shrouded window, he cocked his head towards me again. A gesture of deliberation. Try not to gulp loudly. Ignore the straw. The silence was thick like the sky, maybe just as gray. But then he motioned with his hands to come to the dining room as he turned and walked away.
“Lock the door, please,” he tossed over his shoulder and I followed him to the dining room. “Have a seat.”
I sat.  He returned quickly with two steaming mugs of water which he set on the table awkwardly, slowly, as if he was practicing being watched.  Had been a while since he made conversation. Had been a while since he carried two mugs.
“I thought you said the gas was off.”
“I boiled this before it happened. I am sure you can use some.”
Nonchalantly, he tried to slide the mug nearest to me  but it got stuck and sloshed a little over the top. I nodded and reached out to pick it up:. plain blue, no words written on it, no football team. This mug had no personal meaning to him. Towering over me, his eyes inspected me as he sipped his piping hot mug and I allowed it. Not just the obviousness of his gaze, but my sitting while he stood so he appeared six foot where he was just an inch shorter.  I was a stranger in his house after all. There were no pictures in his dining room.
“Some people have back up generators,” I began.
“I don’t.” He contined to look at me.
I am going to die of pneumonia.
“Where is your family?” I asked him.
“They have gone. West.”
“Without you?”
“This was years ago.”
“Hmm.”
Divorced. Two kids, both boys.
“I am divorced.”
“Kids?”
“Two boys.”
I didn’t grin. I sipped my mug waited.
“You ever been married?”
I looked up with my eyelashes.
“No.”
He sat down at the head of the table. I sat cordially. We sat there in his candlelit dining room lined with mirrors and no pictures and drank boiled water slowly.. It was hard to keep the conversation going. Moments passed before I moved again.. It was seven pm and I was trapped here.
“I miss my family,” I said.
He took a final sip of his water and then got up suddenly.
“You’re hungry?” he pointed at me.
Famished.
“A bit.”
He walked into the kitchen. I scooted my elbow across the table to crane my neck more easily without it being too apparent that I wanted to see what he was doing.  From this distance, I saw two candles on an end table and the usual assortment of things: silver fridge, counters, trashcan, some papers, some cans stacked underneath the cabinet. He turned suddenly and I became preoccupied with my mug.
“A protein bar.”
He handed me a lemon thing with oats in a yellow wrapper and many exciting black fonts on the front.
“I was going to heat up soup until this happened.”
“We can eat it cold.”
Famished.
He shrugged a bit, “You’re right. This is an unusual week.”
He brought out beefaroni. Meat.
“It’s been so cold, I doubt it’s bad.”
I stifled my urge to tell him but then he asked
“You’re not vegetarian are you?” he smiled.
He had a handsome smile. White teeth.
“Not anymore,” I smiled back.
He handed me a spoon.
“Bon appetit,” he winked.
How quickly we settle into routine and it wasn’t a petulant silence that wore us but a calm nothing in the room. You heard only the gentle scraping of two metals as we dipped our spoons into the cold cans.  Not talking, as we scooped the uncooked, saucy dumplings into our mouth. I tended to wolf food down when hungry but in the company of men, I try to avoid this unseemly side of me so I began timidly each bite and in between chewing began to offer friendly conversation. I swallowed a tiny bite, a dainty bite. I was starving. I could not eat fast enough. I could not eat slow enough.
He smiled a little and stood up.
“I’m finished,” he reached his hand out to collect my can.
I looked up in surprise and waited, almost wanting to hand him the can instinctively.
“Oh, I am still eating.”
He nodded and walked to the kitchen, back turned, without suspicion. I heard metal clanging and assumed it was the trashcan opening or shutting. I peeked over again; thought I saw him stacking something on top of the trashcan. The freeze had brought in rodents. They were everywhere now and definitely in your pantry.  I took the opportunity to swallow two of the beef dumplings whole and take a large gulp of water before he got back. My mouth was still full when he came out with some wrapped brownie thing.
“Oh,” he eyed me, mouth full.“I forgot to offer you a napkin.”
I could feel the sauce smeared across my face. Too much. He turned back again to grab one and I wiped my face with my sleeve, chewing as fast as I could. Back quicker, then I thought, I grinned without teeth to express appreciation.
“Take your time,” he handed me a paper napkin.
Chewing slowly and deliberately, I kept my chin down like the doctor told me.
“Take smaller bites, put your head down and make an effort to swallow and over time, you may find that it gets easier.”
She handed me a script.
“Take this too.”
I was not out of meds yet but would be and that was the least of my concerns.  The brownie had nuts on top, sat plainly in front of me in its plastic wrap. One giant brownie, not like the kind I ate as a child; where two came in a package and I ate six a day. Don’t tell him this.
He was still standing when he said, “I don’t have any cat food.”
“It’s ok. Thanks for dinner.” I added, “And dessert.”
He stood over me a bit but I didn’t budge. Finished the cold Beefaroni in front of him. Wiped my mouth in front of him. He stood there. Stay calm. I hate men towering over and people watching me eat and if this was any normal day in spring, I would have commanded he sit or fled or threw my spoon at him but instead I took dainty bites like this was charm school. Like this was a normal day in spring. Like I was here for impression, twirling, bowing, c h a r m. I began to unwrap the plastic carefully knowing I was almost out of water.
“There’s a little bit of water left,” he said, peering down at me.
Nodding without facing him, I focused on unwrapping the paper. We were making each other nervous and I was scared anything I told him would make him uncomfortable. I regretted telling him anything. He carried the kettle to the table. It was that Target-brand bright teal.There was no originality here. Start a conversation. No, a normal conversation.
“Thanks SO much for the water.”
When I recount things, sometimes they are blurred by my filter; my emotion at the time of recall. I understand that the way to get an extra brownie is to walk in the room the grinning ingenue. I watch them breathe as we continue to talk. I watch their shoulders slag. I watch their faces change into suns and smiles and laughter.  But I’m of bitten tongue recalcitrance. This is called “walking the tightrope.” When I recall things, I must remember if temper came into play, if anxiety was near, or if I was a gymnast doing cartwheels for the crowd. The confluence of each part of me is what creates the story. I must remember which part I played. What I will remember about this man is that when he poured the hot water, he smiled at me in a fatherly way, and that I was not the coquettish mouse trapping cats in the basement, but the helpless girl in the dark gripping horror films to stop her wailing.
“Of course.”
He put the kettle on the table and sat back down. I was visibly nervous, fidgety. I kept placing my palms face down on the table and pressing them into the wood. Then, I would retract them and place my palms together and then place them on the top of my thighs. It’s hard to do this without being noticed. My straw was still at the door.  I looked down at my hands on my thighs getting ready to start the cycle again. I opened them and flipped them over to study my palms, unsure of how to start a conversation or how to stop myself from moving involuntarily. Even in this cold, I felt light, ready to fly.
“Tell me more about yourself. Your name?”
“Ava.”
“Ava.”
“My cat is Genevieve. We live a few blocks from here, alone.”
“And you walked here?’
“Yes, I tried to go to the stores and they were already raided or locked. I started walking and then I got kind of turned around, lost, then scared.”
“And you came here?”
I dug my nails into my pants wishing my tips were longer or my layers were less.
“I panicked. Looked for light. The knob was unlocked. I was going to knock if it wasn’t. I may have been imagining the people. It’s cold and dark out there.”
“You don’t have any friends, you said?”
“I just moved here a couple months ago. I have one friend but we don’t know each other well and my dad is sick in Virginia.”
He nodded and stroked his beard. The habit seemed old. He probably didn’t realize he was doing it.
“My phone died.”
“Did you bring it with you?’
“No,” I shook my head, forlorn. “I wasn’t thinking. Is your phone working?”
“A little. I have been keeping in touch with my wife and kids. It’s a mess out there.”
I nodded.
“My dad is dead.”
“How do you know?”
He leaned forward.
“He’s on oxygen, lost power right away, no one to help him really. It’s a long shot. I would have driven but I don’t have  a car.”
Let yourself sob. A tear formed in my eye and I studied his table. Red wood like mahogany, old, antique. His wife’s. Too big to take west.
“Where is your wife again?”
He didn’t answer and instead stared at me. I deserve consolation, true, but here comes the fit of rage. I was a spool of tumult and if you pull me right, you get what you get. Let yourself cry.
“Texas.’
“Texas?’
I looked up surprised. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Got a better job. Can’t complain now,” he shrugged. “My kids are safe. If the airports weren’t closed, I’d fly out.”
“You don’t drive?”
Don’t react to anything he says. I was done crying if that’s what that was. The rage had passed. The storm. I heard sirens.
“Curfew,” he plainly stated.
Don’t react to anything he says.
“Look, you can’t go back out there. It’s curfew and even if you tell them you are just walking home they may not believe you.”
“I thought curfew was at eleven.”
He waved his hands, “I don’t know but I just heard the sirens and the storm is getting bad. Probably precaution. Anyone out now won’t make it if they are far from home.”
And the thing that breaks you is the synthesis of all of it.
“Let’s move into the living room,” he began to stand up.
And the thing that stuns you is the words. The pragmatic formation of sentences meant to protect. Facts.
“I have a fireplace,” he extends his hand towards me.
And the hiss that you repress to remain cordial as your chest cracks in half. I take his hand. I grew up in a shack on the outskirts of Norfolk, Virginia that has been slowly weathered by hurricanes over time. My dad sits on the edge of my childhood bed and watches football and eats Hostess cupcakes. The floor is ruined from his cigarette smoke and uncleanliness. It resembles nothing now. Once, it was a shade of dark purple and the ceiling had glow in the dark stars all over that kept me safe in the dark. Any note I had hidden to myself has been found and discarded. My dad keeps mementos of me near, things I have written him or bought him.  He calls me once a week and attends a methadone clinic daily. The whirr of the oxygen tank fills the house when he sleeps. Our house is full of crickets and cockroaches, spiders and sometimes snakes. My dad lives there alone and I know that sometimes he walks into my dead brother’s room to cry. I place my palm firmly in this stranger’s hand. I let him lead me to his fireplace. The first thread has been pulled. The spool has begun to unravel. Theater tonight is a longing and resentment.
But at least we are warm.
I let out a short laugh, like a cough.
“Hmm?” he asks in the doorway of the fancy living room.
“Oh, it will be good to be warm,” I say.
The second siren goes off and he’s right. It’s seven pm, twenty nine degrees and eight days without electricity in this town. Somewhere in Norfolk, an oxygen tank stops and someone pulls their breath from a deep resolve and I too march.

Right before it hit, I was at my most lucid. I had begun guessing with a 98.4% accuracy. I knew I was off about a couple of things but I felt secure in what I did know

1.The bugs that had descended the trees had all frozen so I didn’t have to worry about killing them.
2. The streetlights were out on almost every block.
3. I use intimidation as a tactic to seize opportunity.
I was in the center of Spruce hidden by a heavy snowfall. The ground was soft and white like powder. You could not hear the snow hit. You could not hear my steps.
I was in front of a house with two candles in the window and walking fast towards the knob. I’m sure if you could slow down time and cast the second of decisiveness like a projector onto a screen, you would see me praying under my breath. But what he and I will remember is the knowingness in which I swung the door open. I doubt I can recount the name I said with complete honesty but the feeling of being a wrecking ball, that never goes away.
“I am being followed,” I said putting my withered, gloveless right hand up, dropping the chewed plastic straw on the ground. “ I am sorry for the intrusion. I am being followed and I am almost out of food.” I closed the knob with the left,“I have no weapon or means to harm you.”
My hands hurt. My knuckles hurt.
“What is that?” he pointed to the straw.
“A straw I play with when I am scared.”
We eyed each other like that in his foyer. He was no more than 5” 11’ and center to the door upon entry like he had been watching it. I made myself smaller in his presence. Where I may have stood 5” 8’ to someone else, I stood 5” 5’ and shrinking. Where I may have held my chin up at someone else, I lowered my head. Where I may have begun to pick the straw back up in a time of more comfort, I bowed and stayed there.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your family?”
“My parents are dead.”
“Your friends?”
I looked up.
“I don’t have many and if they had intended to check on me, the storm made it harder. I just moved here.”
“I don’t have much,” he said.
“Sir, with all due respect, I can tell you have more than me.”
I did not budge.
“How did you get in?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Fuck,” he turned his head to the left.
He was squarely in his forties, divorced, and might possibly have children. He was handsome, wearing a sweater, khakis, looked like he was still preparing to go to work. Like he hadn’t assumed his elderly parents dead like I had. Like he was living in a fantasy. He had great hair too, brown, thick, long.
“I went out earlier,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out at dark. It’s getting more dangerous out there.”
“Well,” I didn’t move any closer. “I have a cat. I need to return to her. The stores are barricaded and the gas stations have been cleaned out.”
“This area is being patrolled.”
“Well, they didn’t stop me from walking this far and I can’t leave empty handed.”
He shifted uncomfortably.
“What’s your cat’s name?”
“Genevieve,” I said without blinking. “She is all I have left.”
I hadn’t moved from the front door. He hadn’t invited me in. We stood squared liked that. Audibly, he sighed. Suddenly, I wished for something else. Like a bomb or my Gigi, my security blanket I slept with until I was fifteen. I knew it was a long shot but I asked.
“Do you have any cat food, at least?”

why does writing take so long? perhaps ive written seven versions at once to hold steady the mystery. version one, story one, opening prologue;

All the blades had been painted to match the handle. Even as her eyes adjusted to the darkness that currently constrained her, this was an air-tight pitch-black chrysalis with only one way out. With no windows or doors or any crack in the walls, she couldn’t discern the difference between a thousand knives pointing at her and the one handle she was supposed to grab. Stuck at the entrance, choosing to stay frozen in a final quiver, the ground moved her. Like the doe letting paralysis sheathe her before the arrow hit, she was forced still before the first bomb dropped.
Something skewered her shoulder. The cut was quick and bit as it landed in her flesh. Fuck.  It was the surprise she couldn’t take like a when a bee landed on her leg in line at the water park. You’re thinking of a snow cone, waiting, feeling like something has scratched you and that’s when you see it’s zigzagging body cutting towards the front.  It’s prick first hums after it’s flown away. You stammer at the welt on your thigh in total disbelief that it was able to penetrate you without you seeing it first. You didn’t even get a chance to swat or run. You didn’t even get a chance to be afraid. A trickle of blood made it all the way to her tricep before she could orient herself. She held her hands out.  

 What was sharper than that first stab were the things she remembered. He had a sudden gentleness that struck her; a sudden recompense he wanted to give her. The way he carefully turned her around to take her blindfold off right before she walked in. The way his hands felt on her shoulders; soft yet utilitarian, letting his fingers feel up the back of her neck with both salacity and pique. He blew his hot breath at her skin on purpose. Within that breath, he contained a duplicity; a fervid violence that stopped her from moving anymore. To your left. Cutting the wire clamp with some invented urgency, at the time she heard murmurs brimming with contrition, some final show of commiseration– here look and he pushed her. She was standing at the front of a long hallway with no light coming from anywhere, no door or window and no choice but to feel her way out. 

She kept her hands out. What she remembered first and how she was so acutely aware of what she remembered first was the weight she carried now. Outside, the world moved. Keeping time with her metronomic heart, which had ceased performing at its normal level, she would say the world was racing. They let her keep the memory of him until the end. He had examined the silver and sapphire urn around her neck, fingering it and looking at it closely, then back at her. His fingernail nails were dirty from the woods like hers. His eyes were light brown with a ring of green around the pupil like hers. He moved his sullied black fingers up the chain threatening to rip it off of her, not with his words but with his teeth that were gritted holding a phrase tight between them. This heart bruised her skin every time she ran and she had been running a lot.. Your tenacity, he hissed and dropped the locket so it banged the deep bruise that had grown in her sternum, is what I admire.  It was your low and persistent song that led them. You’re a fearless woman. I admire you for what you tried.
There were about two short seconds between her standing at the entrance and the first strike. She knew what had pinched her shoulder wasn’t the lever she was looking for. She was three centimeters from the blade that just cut her when the next bomb dropped. She hadn’t moved herself; the floor had continued to push her. Her heart felt a hundred beats in and she couldn’t keep accurate time. Everything was a rush of noise and tremor. She stumbled backwards and the heavy locket suddenly became airy and light; moving, swinging around her throat with ease. The chain hung loose then tight pulling her backwards onto the knife. It made a high tin sound as it was cut from her body and dropped to the floor. What is sharper are always the things remembered; noticed differently last, noticed differently in processing and close and obedient examination. He had asked her in a cheery voice if she wanted to keep the locket.  Taking her silence, as a complicit yes, he let the blindfold drop so she could see what graved her. It was only three seconds between the question and the door slamming behind her.

Her necklace had fallen but she was still chained to the wall. As her body was drawn backwards by gravity, her neck curved to enfold the weapon and something thudded at her coccyx.  It didn’t sting the way the tear at the shoulder stung or rip the way her throat was ripping open. It didn’t pierce her. It didn’t mutilate her. It announced it was there so she would know I am lever, touch me and walk through my wall of knives unscathed. 

You will know it because it will not pierce you, he said. She settled on the handle and let out a long sigh. It lasted only half a second but a long, embarrassing half a second. Thousands of heart beats of relief released in breath as if she had found the exit. A pond began to form at the bottom of her throat. There were two seconds between her standing at the entrance of the doorway and one second between the next two strikes and her throat hanging on a knife. To your left and you will know it. Beneath her gallow, her tailbone knocked the knob that swung the door open and as her body settled, every sword started up her calves and thighs like vines of thorns were climbing her. The pain removed all cognition. She became only sensation. 

To your left and you will know it because it will not pierce you.Veins rushed to freedom and spilled out of her propped open mouth. Red, viscous streams ran off her chin and dripped onto the blade that had torn through her stomach. She tried to lick her lips on instinct like it was melting snow cone. She was a river becoming boundless, becoming lake, becoming rising flood in body. In the darkness, she could barely make out the machete-lined tomb but as the wall began to move, a tiny sliver of light bounced off the tips facing her. Every knife pointed at her from only about three feet away. The wall was opening to another hallway. Eyes heavy, spent and fluttering, were desperately trying to shut but she willed them to stay open long enough to see; fight sleep for one more second and half a heartbeat. Let me see Santa Claus. Let me see what I won.

The weight she carried with her were the last two words he said: his prediction, not his warning but his knowledge and mercy, a mercy she hadn’t trusted until her final half heartbeat. And fast. He had said To your left and you will know it because it will not pierce you. And fast.  The things you remember last, you carry these with you as you pass. And fast. Ingenuity that far exceeded her power, she could leave that. The tackle to the ground as he pinned her, she could leave that. Dragging her through the last mile of woods to imprison her, to taunt her, to smile at her. You are a sly bitch. She didn’t even try to explain herself to him. They understood each other the way predators understand each other; the way lions kill only with hunger and need, using war for territory and feast.  She understood him as the predator understanding herself as the predator. She didn’t fault him. This is wilderness. Wilderness kills with great speed and precision and there is no mourning or penitence. Killing is a very natural need. This was not sentimental. 

The way he held the blue and silver heart in admiration and removed her blindfold to show her the trap, she held that in esteem like it was the agape promised by god. You are a sly bitch. The necklace had fallen somewhere on the floor and she was free. The wall had turned all the way around and she was facing another wall of swords hundreds of feet long. Her eyes shut and she held a hazel gaze in her heart; a gaze marked starving promising return.

Foreword:

When the suggestion first hit me at 11:30 at night, I tried to ignore it. This was a usual interruption to  my sleep; a sudden jolt of insecurity beckoning me to change course or quit entirely. My impulses are whispered in my ear late at night and then carried out the following day, accordingly. Destroy this thing.  I had been more patient recently so the voice was soft, calm, matronly.  Write the foreword, beget the clarity. God, I love writing. Any chance to write something  essayed, poetic, I jump to, but this is different. My strength is in the pithy.  A novel like this would take stamina.  I didn’t want to waste any more time on this project and I didn’t want to toss and turn checking lists, counting errands, running them. Immediately, I spit the thought out. I simply can’t write another thing that isn’t in linear order. Have I told you my joke about linear order?
I don’t know what soothes me more: the completion of anything or the incipient stage that I maunder through, skipping gaily towards a promise, a new me, a reinvention like it’s the beginning of June on the last day of school and I’m counting how I will enter high school before I’ve even left the bus. It’s the work I don’t want to do. My work. My personal work. I found endings horrific. Devastating. In fact, I pummel towards them at the start to get it over with. Grief. Yes, of course, I am writing a story of grief but so much more than that. I am writing a reflection of my inability to complete which renders me in the intermediary stage of this process: refusing to write the ending. It is not just superstition, but pain. The surprise.  I cannot let them go.
I’ve always admired prose. I’ve admired narrators that can chop things up or vacillate between two different times like Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. The weaving of multiple stories on different timelines so it is as if you are understanding the story as the narrator tells it to herself. I find that more authentic the way people really do tell stories, the way people do to relate to one another. The unfolding. The blossom. The waft of maturation in your lines, “did you know dear friend, that I am prone to destroying things to eliminate one part?’ we say calmly over tea. The lightbulb. The final stake in the heart. Omniscience.
It is the writing process. No writer walks into a book and thinks, yes, like this, it will be like this. It has taken me years to execute this, not solely because I am devastated by endings but because I am writing something that forces me to multiply them. Something that forces me to look ahead to tell a finished story. To leave only some room but to walk in knowing what really happens to her. Inspired from an early age by the Choose Your Own Adventure novels, specifically Goosebumps version, this book is you watching her mess up. This book is not happy, although I try to dot it with scenes of elation as she gets what she wants, but there is always a price to pay for attaining. This is a book to be read carefully and I have done my best to write it plainly, as confusing as my own premise was. That we are always uncovering ourselves as we go, remembering the past as it was, the present as we feel to anticipate an ending we deserve. Why did I resist writing this foreword for so long? I have written several drafts already.
The work: the enormity of what I want to portray, a reflection of my own deep synthesis and patient optimism and fear. The fear of being seen. The fear of being finished.  The fear of being misunderstood. The ending you seek is in the tale itself.

“And I came full at them,
hook in mouth
like hungry lure.”

“I am caterpillar. The leaves I eat taste bitter now. But dimly I sense a great change coming. What I offer you, humans, is my willingness to dissolve and transform. I do that without knowing what the end-result will be, so I share with you my courage too.”

I dress like the black
butterfly draped in silver
sequins and pink,
a wand and i open the
door wide open to
little girls on my block
dressed like
kitty cats
and the first thing
i say is

i’m the glinda
the good witch,
i burned a sigil

for this.

12.

I sit quietly with the phone in my lap for minutes turning the last phrase over and over. Not a robber, left a key under my mat, offered flashlight. When the phone turns on and Ian’s name pops up and the first thing he says is
Hey kitten, hanging in there? Need anything?
I think differently.
Well, a robber of sorts.
Grace is the way the engine hums silently, almost a chirr. The way I missed the chirring of insects, I suddenly feel like I got it.
yes
I type
WATER CANDLES BATTERIES PROTECTION NEWS UPDATES. GOT ANY?
He said when I meant it, I should yell it.
It’s 3:30 am and I will hear from him tomorrow. I close my eyes letting the phone charge longer and visualize it; guns, fruit, nuts, candles, a man, a dog, a fence, a bridge, me jumping off. Me, in gown, always blue approaching the icy ledge and then a man behind me:
“Hey.”
And I turn to him and it is snowing hard suddenly.
“Well, that’s one way to avoid a war.”
And then he pushes me. I wake up startled and sweating. The heat is on. Oh, heat, how I missed you. Forty five minutes have passed. Oh shit. The tank is less than a quarter full. My burner is fully charged. Fuck.
“I fell asleep.”
I take the burner off and place the other one.
“I’m sorry, Martha, but someone was going to steal your car anyway and now you’re stuck with us.”
I pinch the knife and rest my head again.  I am on a stage like a play and there are cardboard cutouts all around me. They are painted orange and yellow like flames. I am cooing, not exactly singing but praying in a sing song voice and then squabbling like a bird. I see figures approaching. Silouhettes.
“Psst.”
I look to my right and see a woman dressed in a big brown bird costume.
“They’re all men,” she says and smiles.
I look to the audience and she’s right.
I start screaming.

When I hear the men approaching, I am quiet, petrified and still. It’s their steps, I hear, or rather, I hear movement outside. Perhaps, it is the stray cat I’ve been waiting for. Then I hear,
“This one.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, shh, quiet. I cased it earlier.”
I am still in the seat when I hear the car door open. I am still in the seat when I hear his friend walk around to the other side. I am still in the seat when the engine starts. I am still in the seat when I hear the gravel, the pause, the gravel, the pause, the long gravel the pull away. I am still in the seat, breathing.
“Thank fucking god.’
I look up slightly just to hear better and then I sit all the way up. They stole the car in front of me. They checked to see if it had an alarm as I had the day I tapped it with my finger as I walked by, lifting the handle, just a test and for no reason. I never intended to steal this car. More curious, really, testing preparedness and they had done the same. They had probably been waiting to steal it for hours. They had probably been checking all the cars. They sounded white. The same white men I had run past. I wonder if they are the same white men robbing McKean. I am climbing over the seat. My charger is in my coat pocket with both phones. My pockets have grown heavy. I am looking up the street to see if anyone has exited from the noise and my skin is drumming. There are goosebumps lining my body and I can taste my pulse it’s so loud. If you were here, you would lay gently on my body and ask
“Is there a racecar in your chest?”
I would kiss you even though it’s stupid because I’m sorry.

“Stop it.”
I feel free in this car. I know I should be as quiet as I can but I feel as if I can speak again. Climbing over the console into the backseat, I begin humming, just a bit. Just to take away some tension. It is that moment when I stop fearing being watched that is when I feel watched again and silence myself. This is a nervous time. Anyone walking wouldn’t know this isn’t my car. Anyone walking shouldn’t be trusted.
“I will not leave the key under my mat again. I have done it.”
I scrape the vinyl of the passenger’s side seat with the knife when I turn to jump over the console and I only know because the knife gets stuck and I have to yank it out. Beleaguered. That’s the word I am looking for. I sigh out loud and my shoes are dirty and the front seats are covered in dirt from the way I positioned myself. Sort of rolling the rest of the way, I plop in the backseat and lay down. I am resting my head on both hands feeling the cool of the knife against my cheek. Things I am good at:

–waiting.
–hiding.
–counting.
—words.
—telling long misleading stories to get out of something.
—and when the sun is up and out, I am pretty good at laughing too.

“I am good at lists,” I say to no one.
I give myself thirty minutes before the next move. I start with the names of every street I know and try to keep them in order going North to start: Mckean, Mirch, Morris, Fernon, Tasker, Dickinson, Washington, Catherine, Christian. I don’t trouble myself with being perfect just naming them as fast as I can and in the right direction. North. I am facing the windshield and I am still. When I hear the men approaching, I am quiet, petrified and still.