The first time I saw her, she looked like such a teenager. She wore skinny black pants and an oversized school sweatshirt. Her hair was mussed under a black beanie, and her tennis shoes were scuffed and worn in. She was taller than I thought she’d be, too. I felt so old next to her, so short and simple, but there was something about the way she carried herself, the way she took such confident, big steps that forced me to speed walk to keep up with her, the way she either laughed with her whole being or not at all, the way she said, “Hi,” in a way that was both timid and sure. “You remind me of a dog,” she said at lunch, laughing like we weren’t on a first date, like she wasn’t supposed to tell me I looked nice, looked like I did in the pictures. “Like the way you bounce and move.” I wasn’t aware I was bouncing? “No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she says, not with an embarrassed laugh but with a furrowed brow like she wanted me to understand what she meant. “It was a compliment. When I look at people I see animals. My mom is a monkey, I’m a frog, you’re a dog.” I nod. What do I even say to that? It’s only later, when I meet her family and see where she grew up that I understand. She runs her hands across the fur of her dog. It’s a fond touch but rough and it leaves her dog’s fur sticking straight up. He walks away quickly, almost indignantly, but his tail is wagging. I know the feeling. She does that to me too.

Suddenly, two decades have passed, and she still hasn’t felt what the grown-ups used to call “growing up.” Not that she’d ever been one to imagine castles in the sky or knights on white horses, but she did imagine a bright future, one where she had friendships like the characters on TV seemed to have. They laughed and had adventures together and dropped by each other’s apartments and got beers every night. She imagined she’d have a job as an artist or a writer or a baker or something. The details were so blissfully vague, like watching a Spanish soap opera in soft filter. But it’s two decades into her life, and she feels sadder than she thought she would at this age, beaten down by life like she’s nearly done with it when all she wants to know is whether she’s going to have a job after she graduates. She makes semester-long friendships that end when the class does. She wonders if she can pay her bills on time. She thinks about the future in terms of the number of years it’ll take her to pay off her student loans. She thinks of her future as not much more than a long series of what-ifs and if-onlys.

The driveway was strewn with rotted oak leaves, and Oscar wondered if the old man was still alive. He stopped his car just short of the rusted garage door, knowing that from this vantage point no one from the house could see him. Stepping out of his car, he strode toward the front door. The outside looked much the same as before, ivy gnarling up the walls and spiders webbing around the door. He held up his hand to knock.
“It’s open, Oscar.” He was relieved to hear the old man’s voice through the open window.
“Thanks, Harry. I’ll be right in.” Oscar nudged the front door open and walked into the kitchen. The green wallpaper was faded but the little square table in the corner was clean. The old man had his back to Oscar, stooped over the sink drying the last of a small batch of dishes. Oscar stuck his hands in his sweatshirt pocket.
“The wood looks like it’s staying dry,” Oscar said. The old man gave a slight nod, wiping the counter with slow, decided movements. “I heard it’s been a wet winter.”  
“Not too bad.” The man looked at Oscar with tired eyes. “Those gutters need cleaning, though.”
“I’ll do what I can before I go.”
The old man turned his pale neck back toward the sink. “That’s fine.”
“Do you need anything from town? Or anything?”
The old man didn’t respond. Oscar took his cue to leave, walking through the laundry room and out the back door. An enclosure of thick oaks and cedars faced him, not quite a forest, but more than he could count. His feet carried him on the familiar path, up the mountain where the air was thin, and he struggled to breathe deeply. The trees grew thicker and the path narrower, but he trudged on, finally coming to a stop at a small clearing housing the remains of several tree stumps. In the middle of these stumps sat a bright yellow lawnchair currently unoccupied. Oscar took the opportunity to catch his breath, closing his eyes and lowering himself into the squeaky chair, waiting for her to come. He imagined her sneaking up behind him, covering his eyes. She’d giggle and lope back into the trees beckoning him come to follow her.
He heard a slight rustle through the trees and saw her walk toward him, her steps slower than usual. Her once long hair was cut short against her scalp and her belly protruded in an obvious way. She stopped just short of his arm’s reach, resting one hand over her belly. She cocked her head to the side, looking Oscar up and down. Her eyes settled on his face but not his eyes.
“You got old,” she said.
“You didn’t.” Oscar smiled while she stayed serious.
“I got old and died three times,” she said. “This is me,” she said pointing at her belly.
Oscar reached out to touch her arm, but she took his hand, leading him back out of the clearing down the mountain. He didn’t wonder where they were going. He set aside all the world but her. As he followed behind her, he thought that she looked much different than last time. Her eyes seemed less savage and her skin less pale. He thought she looked strange without her long hair tangled with leaves and wind, and he wondered if the same person that put this baby inside her was also trying to fix her, to make her like everyone else. He tightened his grip on her hand and rushed ahead of her. She gave a tiny laugh and started running after him.
Soon she let go of his hand and sat gracelessly on the ground, resting her head against a tree. Oscar turned around and sat across from her, watching her pick the leaves off a fallen branch.
“This is my tree,” she said, holding up the branch.
“I’ll plant it for you, so it can grow bigger.”
“It’s already dead. Won’t get any bigger.” She began pulling the twigs off the branch, smoothing it into a pole shape.  
“Are you done with college?” she asked.
“Another year.”
“I’m going to go, too.” She sounded like she meant it. Oscar wondered if he had been gone for too long this time. “Soon,” she said.  
Oscar nodded. “You don’t have hair anymore.”
She looked up at Oscar, not meeting his eyes. “It was trapping all my thoughts in my head.”
Oscar smiled. “Now all your thoughts are running around like rabbits having little thought babies of their own.” She laughed out of courtesy, and it bothered him. They sat in silence. He continued to watch her.
“Do you think it’s going to rain today?” she asked.
“Since when do we talk about the weather?”
“I want to.” Oscar said nothing. “I think it’s going to rain. I can smell the water in the air. Do you remember Frankie, that gerbil I had as a kid?”
“I’m leaving again tomorrow.”
“I know.” She started to stand up, bracing herself against the bare branch in her hands. “Frankie knew when it would rain. He did this thing with his ear. Twitch.” She brushed off her pants. “Next time you come back, I’ll be a baby. Brand new and wrinkly.” She met his eyes.
“Are you going to name it after the dad?” He asked, hoping that the dad was long gone.
“No, me.”
Oscar thought she looked very young then, and he could imagine her becoming younger and younger as he continued to age. He would grow into an old man like her father, stooped over and feeble, and she would go to college, reborn without him. Without her hair, she would run faster and he wouldn’t be able to keep up.
“Let’s watch the sunset,” she said, taking his hand. “Go get some lawnchairs and I’ll meet you there.”
He watched her trek up the mountain for a moment before making his descent. As he neared the house, he saw the old man gathering wood, one piece at a time. His bones seemed to creak as he lifted the tarp off the remaining dry wood, feeling which pieces were dry enough. The old man seemed to acutely feel each footstep, pausing on every stair and taking a deep breath, before entering the house. Watching the old man repeat this process again and again, Oscar decided that all the youth in the world did not belong to her. He would preserve her forever as she was now, and by standing in her orbit maybe she could give him everlasting life.
He waved to the old man as he hoisted two lawnchairs over his shoulder. After the old man had walked back inside, seemingly for the last time, Oscar grabbed the half-empty canister by the woodpile and began climbing toward the clearing where she was waiting. He hoped the rain would never come. He arrived out of breath and set up the chairs in their usual places between the tree stumps. She stood at the edge of the clearing, her arms wrapped around her protruding belly, watching as the sun crawled below the tree line. She smiled at him and he beckoned her to sit down. She sat and Oscar told her to close her eyes.
“I want to see,” she said.
“It’s a surprise.”
Oscar crossed the clearing, carrying the canister. He looked as the base of each tree, trying to find the right one in the fading light. “It’s the one on the left,” she shouted.
“Keep your eyes closed.” He tried to sound stern, but he couldn’t stop smiling. He saw the tree and began to pour the contents of the canister onto the trunk.
“I knew you remembered Frankie,” she said. There was a large stone underneath the tree as a monument to the gerbil. Oscar remembered that it was the biggest stone that they could carry as children.
“I know.” Oscar took the makeshift walking stick she had made earlier from her hands and wrapped a piece of his shirt around it. He again crossed the clearing pulling out his lighter. He lit the end of the pole before putting the flame to the gasoline soaked tree. He backed away from the tree as the fire struggled up the wet trunk before flaring in the leaves overhead. It crackled and hissed through pinecones, trying to keep its hold on the damp tree.
Oscar’s leg hit the edge of a stump and he sat down. He felt her walk up next to him. Tearing his gaze away from the fire, he looked up at her, and it seemed to him that her skin mimicked the red of the fire, coming alive in its light. Her eyes were once again untamed, feral. Oscar imagined that no time had passed since he left for college and that no time would ever pass again.
She took his hand, just as the fire spread to another treetop, and put it on her belly. “It won’t burn forever,” she said, letting go of his hand and turning to carry the lawnchair back down the mountain.
It rained. Oscar stayed watching the last embers flicker and die before his feet blindly carried him back to the house where he would clean the gutters and leave.

Yesterday, I sat in front of the TV and watched my life play out before me
Like a badly directed sit com with scripted laugh track and jilted dialogue.

Opening theme song by: that obscure band you pretend to like so they’ll like you  

Starring: that older sister’s friend you thought about under the covers at night.
Starring: that family who said that boys liking boys and girls liking girls was destroying our nation.
Starring: that boy who held your mouth closed and forced you to wash his *** off your tongue
Before he called you baby and allowed you to kiss him.

Starring: that loving God who, you’re told, will no longer love you if you are true to yourself.  
Starring: that girl who you can’t have.
Starring: that girl you shouldn’t want.
Starring: that girl you can’t live without.

Starring: that society who taught you to hate your body.
Starring: that mirror that reinforces what they say.
Starring: those thoughts that tell you to give up because you’ll never be as smart as your sister.
Starring: you’ll never be as pretty as her.
Starring: a number on a scale that determines your self worth.

Starring: wanting to be alone but not wanting to be lonely
Starring: loneliness  
Starring: self-loathing
Starring: ****** thoughts you keep hidden because Christian girls like you should like Christian boys
                Like him who fingered you in his truck not an hour after praying in Jesus’s name.

Starring: that flutter in your stomach every time you hear her voice.
Starring: her being the reason you’re stay alive.
Starring: life, your life, lived by you and no one else

Starring: You, with a bible in one hand and a cigarette in the other,
                Because surely one of those things will smoke the demons out, you think.
                You hope.

Still

Her pale skins scabs over and grows back translucent.
She’s disappearing but she glows like starlight,
It bursts from her pores, shining and silver and still.

Still, so still. She is unmoving.

Inside she’s screaming, clawing at the nerves of her brain
Spiders crawl across her arm,
But she’s a prisoner in her own skeleton.
She breaks her skin but she can’t break through.

Still, she cannot move.

Her body fades into transparency as the world looks on oblivious.
Look, class! Look how she rattles at the cage of her bones.
Look how they shake and lock her in tight.
Look how still she sits, so still.
Look how beautiful she’d be if she smiled.
Let’s stitch one across her face and tell her she’s fine.    

Still, I watch her from a distance.

I can’t look away but I can’t help. God knows I’ve tried.
I kiss her lips, hold her wrists, try to tell her body it’s still alive.
I try to tell her that life is more than the bones which imprison her.
I try to see her though she’s disappearing.
I try to hold her though my hand passes through her like smoke.

Still, I try.

You are
       the poison running through
                                 cold veins
       the name exhaled under
                                 shaky breaths
       the melody drumming through
                                skipped heartbeats
       the haze clouding my
                                every thought.

Without you
              darkness filling
                         demons reigning
                                    dread consuming
           endless night.