You wake up wanting something warm. There is a leak in your mug.
Unaware of this, you complete three minutes of unrelated activity
and discover that your table is ruined. How terrible, how terrible,
you think, because this table belonged to a maternal grandmother
your biological mother never even met, and for an additional three minutes,
you think about placing yourself in a windowless shed with an animal
much larger and hungrier and more terrible than you.

You never would have thought it tragic to misplace a grocery list,
but this one contained the scribbled phone number of the man
from last week who told you where to find your first music
box and your lost flashlight and your missing biological family,
all somewhere in a heavily wooded area, all underneath the soil,
all somewhere you never would have thought had it not been
entirely obvious to someone who yelled at you from across a hardware store.

There is a leak in your brain. Imagine what this would be like. Think
of a crowd demanding that you speak and watching as a colorless,
odorless liquid makes a head of you and your mouth. Think of your
house after you lose control of your sensory abilities because of a small
crack in your skull until your memories have ruined your carpeting
and your ambitions have waterlogged your furniture. You cannot
repopulate a town, and your body heat is useless for drying a flood.

You told your adoptive father about the man from the hardware store.
You were going to give him that phone number, knowing
this was the only thing that might save his life.
Your adoptive father is not happy with your adoptive mother. Your adoptive
mother is not happy with you. You are not happy sitting by your
ruined table. Your ruined table is not happy with the silence. You
are not going to be able to find your way.

You knock on the door of the windowless shed, but someone yells
that they are already inside. You remember there is not a door and
wonder what you have done. You remember that all your leaks
leak out gasoline, that everything is going to explode into painful
illumination. You are going to die as a result of a stabbing sensation
that will be bright, and I am going to die, and everyone is going to die.
It is all completely worth it. It is all completely worth it.