i smoke nights like this into clustered movements of kittens mewling for an extra inch. she says, you’re thinking of her, aren’t you? i reply, i think of everyone underneath mounds of dirt and hiding from lamp posts deeply rooted in cracked cement and the passage of time. he says, even this has its limits, even you must realize what you are doing to yourself, and i laugh myself into another bottle whose neck i crack along the curb to climb inside of. my mother brandishes her caring like a sword that has no handle carving us both deeply as she plunges into talking me out of shutting windows from the stifling heat. i drive around streets that have lost all meaning save for their lack of arrival and seductive penchant for departure. my father had sat me on his knee to wipe a lick of hair from my forehead and i wonder whose hand i was ever more afraid of considering how brutal mine has become.