Eat, eat, eat.
Burn, burn, burn.
Until all the pages are shriveled up black and gone.
This time, for good.
It’s almost night again. I have been alone for twenty-four hours. I have knocked on the doors of almost everyone I know, like some kind of crazed salesman or missionary who has pest control or religion to share. But no one answered. When I peered into windows, no one looked back.
And now I’m home again. Burning.
Something comes over me. A feeling. Like I’m floating flat on my back in a dark cold lake, staring at the sky, and I know there’s a swim of things going on underneath that could take me down.
Despair.
I burned the journal.
So what?
Now what?
I leave the ashes on the driveway and walk over to the front steps to sit down. It’s humid, the air weighing on me like a hand, pressing against every inch of my skin. Along the road, one of the streetlights flickers on, then out. I watch for a minute, but it stays dark. Maybe I imagined it.
I used to sit here with Yolo in my lap, his sleek black fur and purr a warm silk.
I wish I had my cat back.
My words hang in the lonely, unbreathing night.
24.
now
And
Something leaps and lands, soft but solid, on the porch next to me.
Yolo.
He’s back.
25.
now
My cat is back.
Yolo climbs onto my lap and purrs and kneads, as if he’s been waiting for this for ages, too.
He’s always acted like that. Like he’d beensooooneglected, even if I’d hung out with him moments before.
I’m laughing and crying. I’m hugging him so hard he gives me amehof annoyance.
He was always too lazy to do the full meow, just themeh,and that’s how I am one hundred percent sure that it is him. He sticks his claws into my knee and lifts his chin so I can get the soft spot under it, the spot where he has a secret gray patch that’s usually hidden.
Yolo is back.
“Such a good boy,” I say, “such a good boy you are,” and hemehs at me again and I’m so delighted. And then I realize:
