The day I arrived it was hot, not snowing like I had thought it would be, or should I say, like I thought I had been promised. It was scorching.  My feet were sore and drenched. I wore socks, always, even in these temperatures. Well, if I was wearing sneakers or boots which I often was as they are easier to walk in, I always wore socks. People who don’t wear socks with their sneakers are disgusting. I wore boots that day with a short blue floral sundress. They were old, both the dress and the boots. The dress was a hand-me-down gift from someone, possibly seven years ago and the boots a present to myself on a rainy day when I needed to walk puddles. They were from the thrift store: brown and big and clunky.
My face was bare and so was my head. I’ll interject to admit I could have been a little dramatic about  the heat but I felt like I was peering into the center of the sun and so did my skin. My forehead and face were streaked with sweat. Walking for miles, my knees hurt and my legs hurt. My back hurt and I was tired. Not just tired, but consumed, oddly barren but so heavy and so hot.  I carried nothing in my hand. I hadn’t drank anything for hours. Obsessed with the way my mouth felt, I was constantly opening and closing it, feeling how dry my tongue was against the roof. Opening and shutting my jaw to hear the click, to see how much I could open it, to feel it tense and lock near shut. Rubbing it with my hand, sort of humming cajoling it to open, it was on the verge of close without my input. When I arrived at the hospital, I was on the verge of collapse anyway so the entire process went faster.
My knees buckled from over exertion and anxiety when I walked in. I could barely stand so the attendings swarmed me to help. They brought me water and that’s when I spoke, for the first time to anyone all day.
“I can’t. I’ll choke.”
I fainted. I was so proud of my body for fainting.  I can’t lie. I feel the constant need to confess so I had walked for miles until I fainted. They tried to ask my name. I whispered and they repeated back: Sadia? I could only nod. When someone has no ID, they use Doe or Smith as a last name to keep everyone separate. I was Sadia Smith. I was admitted to Pennsylvania Presbyterian Hospital for severe dehydration and exhaustion and later admitted to Presbyterian’s acute psychiatric unit for a dissociative fugue. The name on my file said Sadia Smith. “Manic. Possibly psychotic.”
I heard them say that the following morning as I waited for my special consult. I was excited for the consult and this new shiny name. They had tucked me in a room with an older white woman who screamed randomly in the night. She didn’t scream all night, just whenever the urge came over her at unpredictable intervals.  I felt I deserved that. I liked that I couldn’t sleep. The next morning a very warm and fuzzy glow masked my eyes as I walked the unit avoiding drinking water, avoiding breakfast, avoiding comraderie. Me, with my freshly shaved head and blue gown and the word “courage” written in permanent marker on my skull (I wanted to see if it would make a good tattoo), avoiding. I felt giant. I felt like laughing in their faces. Sure, I’m thirsty. Who isn’t?

thirteen stories for boys and thirteen stories
for witches.

and suddenly elucidated,
I remember,
I am the dark thing
inside of me.

“datura moon”

give me coffee,
watch me run in circles,
flash my tongue.
what it’s like to rule like queen:
favors coming at you and people
trembling in their seats,
the gluttony, the theft,
the power
What do I want?
and at your leisure.

“The way there is sudden and the way back is worse.”

jeanette winterson

We are going to tiptoe this steep one.
We are going to be even slower
than I thought possible
when I am already slow
like dead clocks.

“my soul is ten thousand miles wide and extremely invisibly deep.”

–ursula le guin, searoad

but in malice, the brambles
that i’m tied to:
dauntlessness prevails,
action, cardinal,
bitter.
they always say i’m bitter.

The whole thing, I mean the whole robbery took, less than twenty minutes. By the time I got up the steps, my adrenaline had taken over. It was a heater: two in fact, on either side of the couple. Their bed placed near the window like mine, I mean, it could have been me. I could have been named Martha and aged gracefully with a husband who cared about my comfort enough to wrap me with the extra throw knowing it can’t fit the whole bed. I could have been Martha squabbling over defrosting meat and key placement and leaving the toilet seat up but I’m so caustic. Rabid, I am walking to the one nearest to me and I am picking it up without turning it off and I am backing out the door, wathcing them. Asleep on their backs in some kind of bliss. Well, they are warm I think. Where I have rested anxiously, uncomfortable, wrapped in cat, they have been dreaming of a tomorrow when the streetlights come on. They have one heater and that is enough. I am bitter, sort of hopping faster down the steps, having memorized the route up. Cautious but faster, I head back to the island and open the first drawer.
“Oh,” I accidentally let out.
I click the button on top of the heater so as not to waste it and pray it doesn’t make any announcement as it is being turned off. My eyes have adjusted. I see 24 batteries, car keys, scissors, rubber bands and miscellaneous. I grab a few rubber bands and tuck them into my pocket. I am moving slower now, holding the heater but drooling. My index finger traces the battery pack to look for the opening. Sneer. That’s how to describe what this would look like if anyone flashed a spotlight in my face. The corner is ripped. I one by one pull out six, place them in my pocket. And then, I surprise myself. I take the car keys too.
Their license plate read BGG- 1222 and I remember it because it would have been perfect it had said 2222. But 1222 is not correct. It should have been 2222. So I remembered the error on the red sedan. I am not sorry for anything.

 I am halfway between the stairs and the island when I stop again. No dog jumped out the day of the groceries and no dog has stirred since I entered from the back. I haven’t heard any movement, in fact, I wasn’t sure if anyone was home. I can’t see the steps well so I reach my right hand out for the rail. The other reason the 1, 2, 3 heel game is effective is because you can’t drag your feet in unfamiliar territory. You never know what you’re going to pick up or stub your toe on and dragging feet makes more noise than heel toeing it. I hold my hands out and head for the stairs, aware of the knife. Aware of the knives. Heedful, I slow down to a bit of a crawl until my right front toe hits the first step. Any faster and I might make a noise. My left foot catches up and I wait again. Hearing the buzz, I hear something hidden underneath it: a grumble. No, not a grumble, a snore.
Stupid. You’re so stupid.
Right foot, 1, 2, 3 and right hand carefully find the rail. Left foot, 1, 2, 3, left fingertips carefully find the wall. This is my house. This is an industrial, provincial town. This is a working class row home designed for exhausted bodies and there was no originality in design or construction. They made them all the same. I was walking up the steps of my own house very slowly lined with knives and a flashlight and no fear of a cat or a dog running beneath me to trip me and no fear of recourse and no fear that anyone will match the dirt prints lining their halls with my second-hand combat boots. No, no fear in these ankles or elbows or suddenly dead still fingers and dead-pressed lips not saying even a prayer or a hum or a good superstitious word. Groomed. I’ve been groomed for this.  1, 2, 3, toes hit. We are going to tiptoe this steep one. We are going to be even slower than I thought possible when I am already slow like dead clocks.

 I don’t leave the doorway. I am waiting for a dog or a cat or even a bird to blow my cover. I am waiting for my eyes to find the couch. I am waiting for the stairs to creak and I am facing the front windows, open slightly, to let what tiny bit of light is to be found outside in but I will paint a picture: I’m in a pitch-dark tomb. I take one step forward with my right foot and count seconds in my head to keep focus and see how long it takes me to move. When the heel begins to lift, I count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, before the heel is back down again. Then the left foot, try to get it one second less: 1, 2, 3, 4 because I am being reasonable and know that I will have to walk into the house freely. I am finding my footing. I am catching my breath.

This is a game I used to play as a child with my older brother and his friends.  The game was called “Dark” where everyone hid and the counter had to walk through the pitch black house waiting to be scared. It wasn’t like hide and seek because the goal wasn’t to find the others, but to not scream.

“You always scream!” Alex would taunt me.

“No, I don’t, let me try again.”
I would pull on his shirt and chase him all day so that when Edwin and Tyson came over, I was introduced as the fourth player. Relentless. That’s the word I was looking for earlier. It is an unrelentingness that allows people to survive in these kind of hardships. Pleasure is removed it is about ardor. We are surviving merely to prove that we can and for no other reason than that is all there is to do now. Stand without concession. 1, 2, 3. Heel hits the floor. I had another motive. I was trying to find them. I was giving myself time to see in the dark. I was giving myself room to hear them breathe or squirm or fuck up completely and knock something on the floor. 1, 2, 3 other heel hits the floor. My fingers traced the edge of the island just to keep center. I was in the middle of it, close to the edge and in my house, the drawers were on the other side. In my house, when I am prepared which I wasn’t often,  batteries existed in that drawer. My left hand stayed on the top of the island and I turned my body towards the fridge letting my right hand glide down and towards the right feeling for a handle and being greeted by flat, wooden paneling. I was right.

I begin the ballet around the island but am stopped when I realize I have been hearing a steady buzz coming from upstairs this whole time. Buzz means electricity. Electricity means heater. The steps are to my left. The master bedroom is upstairs and to the left. My body is already moving at a faster pace: 1,2 heel drops, 1,2, other heel drops. This is what confidence does: propels. The last thing I need is a mistake. Not only am I lined with knives in an obsidian colored house whose layout and obstacles are foreign to me but I could use the self esteem boost given the circumstances.
“We are having a no mistake day.”
I say it under my breath, soft,  barely audible but but I say it out loud nonetheless so I know it is heard.

It kind of glimmers a bit in the moonlight; what little there is, and I pick it up for fear of losing sight of it in the dark. The key stings. It is freezing. Stupid. Hear me in my head, neighbors, you are stupid. I am crouched over several dead branches and feeling stuck, like my joints are stuck, stiff, an aging woman is an art to become and then when passing windows, a horror to watch. I am not quick or stealth. I am exposed. The whole walk over I rehearsed in my head a sudden fit of panic, Oh please, I’m sorry, I am all alone and nervous, scared, I’ve been desperate for water, batteries and then scrunching my face up to make the motions of crying.  I hop up and turn, ignoring my knees cracking to face the window again. Key in hand, boots on feet, knives in pocket. Hear us in your head, sweet child, go safely into kitchen.

Tiptoeing up the walk to the thrum of a racing pulse, I may hear them in my head but my heartbeat is a rival. I stand at the pillar. I have no plan. I remember standing outside of your house for thirty minutes once. Your door was black and had big white numbers and I could never have been mistaken about the location. For thirty minutes, I stood there and watched the curtains, shut, the light inside and imagined what it would be like to step inside. Pictured the embrace, the amenities, the way you would offer me cider, take my coat, smile. There was a bravery that brought me there and here and a cowardice that pulled me from your walk with no explanation. You, never hearing from me again. Me, never experiencing the warmth of a good friend like that. Now, here in this closet of voices, I stand tall, shaking and sure as shit about to die at any moment in a new, darker Philadelphia. Stop thinking and end all your problems.

“If only,’” I whisper, turning the key slowly, peering into the window as if there were candlelight.

This elderly couple hides a key under a gargoyle because they have arthritis like me. Those heavy locks that people hang on the railing of the stairs of their stoop require a strong wrist and pinch. I saw them that day, arguing, old, together in their seventies. They way they hunched to carry groceries, the way they bickered with that raspy worn out esophagus.  The gold painted plate that hung on the brick said 456 Mirch  and the inside of their house looked just like mine, down to the island in the middle of the kitchen that I am facing. I bet, I think, as I open the door wider, that she can’t work one of those locks and he’s had trouble too and they think this neighborhood is safe anyway. His name is probably Bill. And she says to him, Oh, Bill, it will be fine, no one one will sneak into the alley at night.  I bet, I think, as I push past the black rubber mat with the white decorum flowers, that they have never been robbed. Her name is Martha. He says Martha, we can’t be too careful, but you’re right, Dave and Betty are always looking out for us. I bet, I think, as I squeeze the open and alert switch blade in my palm, an old gift from an old suitor, that they have never been confronted in an alley or at a grocery store. I bet, I think, as I let my eyes adjust to the new darkness, the new trickle of white through the windows where a sliver of moon has been kind but it isn’t enough to spot the 5” 8’ all black silhouette daintily tracking prints through the lovely town home. As my palm settles around the sharp end, I shut the door carefully behind me with my free hand and I wait. Someone once told me if there was a prize for waiting silently, I’d be wreathed in gold. I say,

Nothing.