i.
do I really have to do this? I ask myself that a lot. it is pitch dark, with darker lines where the corners are. I am a thin layer away from the ground, but he calls it a mattress and he says we’re in between things, but I prefer to think of this whole period as in between life. not just the smoke breaks but all of it, all of what this room swallows from me. I can take it back, but do I really have to do this?

ii.
What I am missing in my garden are women, or at least a girl I can touch. sweet easy smiles, freckle-hunting, fairy fingers eager to help me pull weeds and fondle petals. I think my gender pool is prized and rare; they are soft all over, but always out of reach. Their voices are like flavours in a candy store of my old hometown. places I can’t get to. I think about those a lot.

iii.
There are fireflies here but they glow to his faculties, in respiratory real time. the foliage is lush & abundant, unwashed mountains of cotton, or lycra. this has it. has had it. he kills the last firefly & here he comes, draping himself over me like cloth, a fantasy joy–

ouch

–kill, sweaty pores pressing a flood down. and then I float off into a conversation with the part of him that wasn’t paying attention. we discuss the implications of monotony, the word papers could print was ‘prolonged’, but it was also mechanical, diligent, like clockwork. this man is a furious gardener with a lot to bury in me, digging away. I expressed my disappointment about how all this pain hadn’t really done much for me as I had expected. I am hardly a flower in bloom, proudly wearing sunshine. suffering was character-building, but nothing here could win anyone over. If this goes on, no songs would be written about me, no books with names changed to protect. I would just wilt with the burden of his psychology. I thought he had it, this has it, my dreams as seeds to draw forth from the lycra hills.

iv.
his grunting self got carried away with the part of me laid out for him a thick gray viscous drop of drool spread itself on my eyelid the cruel joke to my vision turned literal

v.
here I am in between life. maybe it was a stretch to say nothing gained here would win anyone over. what I am missing in my garden are women. I can tie these ends into a knot and the knife behind my pillow will help me. he likes it when I hold my hands above my head. My hands are in between the pillow and a chunk of steel. I am in between him and a new life.

vi.
the new life is so good. so I was wrong. suffering = character-building. character = win people. they have so much sympathy to give, they understand. so maybe I win too. this new life has it. it is worth a movie. It’ll be a box office hit, I just know it.
vii.
the girl may look nothing like me, but does she

• go to women jail, or does she
• bite into a hotdog shyly by the stand, the camera zooming back while she contemplates whether to get into the yellow cab as the credits roll or before the screen fades to black?

Both are happy endings.