To be alive is to be invented in the mind. My private inner life fakes it theatrically. As if I didn’t champ at the bit like a stuffed animal with a dying battery. I feel down my back for the velcro slit. Open elsewhere. A frozen brick of witch hazel between my thighs. My vocabulary small-talks its way into a new clique. Language emptied into the bloat of an absorbent garment. Eating a beet and goat cheese sandwich, I taste every animal sound. Thought this symptom would pass. The barnyard trumpets in the dark as I leak. Pelvic floor twines my hair in its fist. Jerks. Look at the ceiling. See the moon and stars on spinning strings, muscles twitching. Light bleeding. Split and reconfigured in our shared dark.