Nazeera turns to look at me.
“You know I love you, right?” she says. “Like, it causes me actual pain to think about how much I love you?”
“Yeah,” I say tightly. “I do.”
“Good.” She nods. “Just checking.”
She moves to leave and I place my hand on her shoulder, stopping her. She lifts her head again slowly.
“Hey,” I say. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she says, but her eyes glint, briefly, before she turns away. She takes a breath. “I’m okay. I’m just thinking it might finally be time to buy a couch.”
19
Rosabelle
In my dreams, she’s always running.
Clara laughs, racing through tall grass, her white-blond hair streaming in the wind. Her cheeks are full, flush with color; her hands catch the puffy heads of dandelions, releasing wishes into the sky.
She stops, looks up, watches them float.
A fist of sun unclenches above her, fingers of light illuming her face as she searches the clouds, and I know, without knowing how, that she is six years old.
Just a dream.
I tilt with the tilt of her body as she bends to fill her pockets with pebbles, then twigs. A damselfly lands lightly on her shoulder and she doesn’t notice, her knees sinking into dirt, fingers digging into ground, turning over earth. A worm. She’s found a worm.
Three worms and a millipede.
One pill bug.
Rosa, she shouts, her head popping up, her smile blinding.Do you want to play a game with me?
I have no mouth.
I’m suspended in cool water, drifting; my mind hovers inside a head inside a body inside a dream inside my mind. I can’t feel my skin.
I have no teeth.
I’m blind even as I watch her clamber to her feet; senseless even as I feel the breeze. Pebbles release from her soft fists as she wipes dirty hands on her white dress.
A butterfly totters over, curious.
Clara looks around.Rosa?
Here, I try to say.
I have no voice.
Rosa, where are you?
Here. Where am I? Here. I have no head. I’m here—
Rosa?Clara says my name quietly this time, her eyes rounding in her face.
I’m here.
