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1 You are standing on a shoreline with a thimble, trying to bail out the ocean. A storm is approaching.
2 You are sitting in a subway car when a woman faints, and everyone silently watches. You want to help, but your arms feel stitched to your sides. A stranger’s hand twitches toward her, then stops. Another stranger closes their eyes, as if concentration alone could hold her upright. You try to stand. Gravity thickens around your knees like concrete.
3 You have a neighbor who asks for a cup of sugar. They never give the measuring cup back. They return instead with rumors: a missing person poster taped crookedly to a lamppost, a hurricane that hasn’t made landfall yet, a protest forming three blocks away. They leave these facts on your windowsill like a steaming hot pie. You don’t know where to put them.
4 You are an open field.
5 You are an open field. It is wildfire season.
6 Your calves ache as if you’ve crossed continents. You don’t remember the part where you start running.
7 You’re twelve years old again, in a room with a lock that clicks too softly. An adult says your name like it’s a question you’ve already answered wrong. You learn how easy it is for something to happen without technically happening. How your body can stay very still while your mind climbs out through the ceiling.
8 You do not bleed enough to make it obvious. After, you rinse your mouth in the sink. You taste metal anyway. You understand that you can betray your body, and it can betray you back. This is when something moves in — setting up house behind your teeth, sleeping with one eye open. You don’t name something. You certainly don’t trust something. You let it stay.
9 You are accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Your mouth is full of teeth that are not yours. They are alien in their curves and grooves. Every word of your speech cuts you from the inside. You want to pull them all out, but you worry your behavior is too violent. They might rescind the Prize.
10 You are in an empty DMV. Somehow, there is still a line.
11 You are standing on a shoreline with a thimble, trying to bail out the ocean. Every scoop evaporates before you can toss it behind you. The waves keep coming. Everyone else around you is holding buckets, barrels, cargo containers. You keep scooping anyway.
12 You are twelve years old again, standing in a grocery store where all the labels have been replaced with handwritten notes: take this if you’re lonely, leave this if you have enough, share this if you dare. You pluck an apple from the bin and feel someone else’s warm fingerprints. You lift it to your face, breathe in its faintly sweet skin—like you have done ten-thousand times before. As if you have saved the whole world with your smallest possible hand.
