I feel the tingling in my chest that usually signals the onset of a panic attack, but instead, your nakedness spills like a crackle of lightning across the sheets, and I’m suddenly aware of the difference that makes and how without it social constructs would collapse and there would be shocking new twists to ancient myths, lifeguards drowning in kiddie pools, churches embracing sin and heresy, and the patron saint of shopping mall Santas, accompanied by spooky background music, sucking at Christ’s wounds, and first thing in the morning, too.

Fleeing for their lives, families brave oceans in paper boats, only to be turned back on reaching their destination. Caw-caw-caw, white crows cry, but less as frantic warning and more as bitter recrimination or desolate testimony. The living and the dead, the real and the imagined, the seen and the hidden, merge in a mirey mix at the behest of the home audience. Smoke from distant wildfires blot out the sky. None of those responsible will be held liable. The ancient Babylonian spirit that murders babies in the womb clings to the souls of mothers and speaks through their mouths.

While seagulls swirl in the bright summer sky like silver foil confetti, I’m trapped under a boat dock. The water is up to my neck and rising. My dead cousin Rhonda miraculously appears. She looks down at me through the gaps between the wood planks. By now I’m struggling to keep my mouth out of the water, which reeks of gasoline and motor oil. “Why would you do this to us?” she scolds. I can hear people walking around above as if nothing terrible is happening. The worst atrocities aren’t on the news. I’m beginning finally to understand something about it.