Maybe it’s the rising sirens, maybe it’s the sudden soak, a complete wet heat through the cotton sack I’ve taken to wearing like a body flung overboard because this is who I am now, this is who I’ve become. The promise of sleep retreats. We all know this story. Between my legs a heart-shaped pillow slings up my thigh by garter belt. I bought it off the internet. It is meant to alleviate the sciatic nerve so I squeeze it like a sponge but the pulse shoots down my leg in a stunning fuck you anyway despite my compliant positioning on my right side where I lie, facing my husband. My husband snores peacefully. It is the fourth of September. The dog rises, circles himself, resettles with a harumph. I count the middle seconds like contractions, as if measuring the distance of an approaching storm. Talk to me about borrowed time. Cue the litany of lists: call x, email y, send a get-well bouquet to z. Squirrels rustle the roof, pigeons whirr proudly from between the solar panels where they’ve built their nests. The curtains flutter through the open window of our third-floor bedroom where we’ve decamped as though in hiding, as if bad news won’t reach us here. Now the whole block is engulfed in a red-blue glow as an ambulance slows, sound off, spinning its arcade lights bright as a rocket pop dripping down a summer wrist, but it is a false alarm. There is no emergency. No one has called for help. On the phone my father uses words like squamous, esophageal. I google survival rates then open a fresh browser and google again as if like car insurance those rates might improve. Now my phone thinks I have a tumor. My horoscope says don’t log regrets so I open the apps and scroll: here’s a mass shooting, there’s death by earthquake, death by airstrike, protest, protest, protest. Children pose atop dorm beds, children hold placards on the first day of school. Downstairs the children’s rooms sit made and empty. By all accounts, this is called a happy ending. Have some creatine, stock up on spirulina, there’s a gummy for everything: focus, long-distance, digestion, sleep, love. An influencer says: celebrate each moment. My mother urges me to stay home in a flash flood but what are the chances? Now the walls pipe up, the floors crackle and pop like stiff joints aching from a life of containment as the hour loosens toward morning, and a sanitation truck idles to a stop behind the obstructing vehicle whose lights still spin like a deserted roller rink long after the last dance. There is no way around it. I will never be this young again. Vaccine mandates are being rolled back in Florida. Overhead, a helicopter drones
