What made me want him? That supple, brutal kingsnake of a boy, wine-lipped and longhaired.

Father is the name for what guards the front door. The world outside is full of noise. A truck, a lawnmower, a dog, and then another.

The doctor delivers the diagnosis. He tells Gulisa, ‘It could be worse.’

One day, we came home from a walk in the woods and found something waiting for us. It wasn’t a this, or a that, or a they; it was a bunch.

On a dirt street, in a one-room shack with a rain-tempered roof, lived a woman who sold sex to the workers of her district, and she did this because of all the ways one made money in the hard-mouthed world, this was the easiest for her.

We were always trying to get her attention. ‘Your mother is busy,’ said our father. ‘She is an important woman.’

My sister puts petals back into the earth.