Some girls lived in the Lorena Bobbit House. You could stay for a month or


for the winter. Janet offered me the couch. Six of us that season, long ago




she’d stopped doing meth and me and my best friend too. She rode Ami’s back


in the living room. We put on My So-Called Life, nostalgic for Angela, Rickie




and Ray-Anne. That episode where Rickie runs away—lots of kids are homeless,


even on TeeVee. I’m not I’m just not going home.




The whole time Kay drew small circles on me. We saw the warehouse get raided,


Rickie get God. She was the one wanting to spoon like




girls can just up and cup each other. At the Lorena Bobbit House we slept sound.


A banjo tune: Go to sleep my little baby (it was in Spanish).




Attached and detachable, dreams thick enough to drag a knife through, smell


of her neck where the blonde hairs curled. What was left in the desire closet:




vial of wolf fur, too many VHS tapes. Seven years later, neck of a champagne


bottle in her hand, we watched the New Year enter Bushwick.




Nothing happened. Steam whistles blew over Willoughby. She asked if we’d met


before. I said yes but that’s all I said. Because we had come separately,




we left separately. Her, in a fur coat, in a band—she can’t be bothered to speak of it.