Britney

I am doing two things La Loba would scold me for: wearing a knee-length sweater in 86 degree weather and hiding from my problem, in the same room as the problem. There’s a stack of Freud at my feet and it reminds me of freshman year, when I sat here and proclaimed that I wanted to spend all of my time learning. My education didn’t arise from Nietzsche but from ashes and bunker corners and scouring my tongue over the kitchen sink.

Yesterday: We walked into the graveyard after our time on the hill and I said it was my first. I had only visited the grey slabs in passing trains where my mother bit all my fingertips when I pointed at them. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck?” she said. “Never do that again.” All of the names are Irish or Italian with Eastern Europeans in between. The sky is too flat here and all the angels look the same.

Mausoleum passing. “Why do some of them have tiny houses?” he asks. I love his questions. “What a waste of space. This is why I don’t want a grave. I don’t want to be a waste of space.”

“I don’t want a funeral. I don’t even want to be buried. But I also don’t want to be cremated.” I think about how I never thought my mother would lose her body. “Honestly, when I die, they can just throw me in the trash.” I like the way we talk because there is truth in all of our jokes.

We reach a crossroads. “Which way?” he asks. Eenie-meenie-miney-mo, yes or no—that way. I point and we walk. “It’s another hill,” he says. He skated the last one we were at.

“I’m gonna do it,” I say, resting my board down.

“No, I don’t want you to get hurt.” He said this last time, but this road is worse and the cracks are unforgiving. I’ll be fine. It’s a worthy trade-off. I feel him watch me as I go. ♦