My father reaches for his gun and points it at the sky. The black cat in my neighborhood meows at me. There’s a certain opulence in waiting until you die, in believing you’ll stop pretending when this is all over. The flickering in your periphery? Some call it cowardice—like fleas circling a horse, its eyes twitching. Others call it survival: the way my mouth struggles to say words; the way my body remembers the prickle of cattails, cuts across arms, my father pointing a gun at the sky. No, my brother. No, at me. The cat is orange, actually. Fear is lemons, plump, stolen from my neighbor’s farm. Did you know you can use all the right words yet be misunderstood anyway? I draw a stick figure in the cornfields. Crows peck it to death. I place my thumb against the sun and squint. It’s nighttime. When I try to sleep, I imagine myself as the prettiest monster: savage and brave and alive. When I try to wake up, all I see is maple leaves stenciled against neon sky, metallic birds, triangular clouds. None of this is right. I ache. I reach for a memory that’s not there.