​ At around one in the afternoon towards the end of lunch break, Chloe calls me into the conference room and – what do you know – everyone is standing around with paper party hats and other paper party things. Most of the guys from the Possum Division are there and so is everyone from the eleventh floor. They come up to me and pat me on the back saying congrats and good job. Sam from the Artificial Barrier and Migratory Manipulation Department blows on his party horn right in

You wake up at 2:00 AM, hungry, the way you did as an infant, when you would claw at my shirt like a blind animal, moving upon the scent of milk beneath fabric, like the smell of humidity before rain. Your face is bathed in blues, the holy light from the television, as though you lay on the bottom of the ocean floor like a relic that I found, my Easter Island head. I feed you mini muffins as your eyes roll back, ear pressed to my femoral artery, and I realize, desperately, th

she is in bed.  her breath  comes shallowly,  with sounds of a stuck zipper  opened. my family  uncomfortable. my brother bringing tea.  her mouth slack. death arrived slowly like a man collecting bins. her face not a face – just a place for holes to go through. the room is warm. things blink. oxygen and medical machines. she looks nothing  like anyone's grandmother. eyes  closed, cheeks aged inward –  a pumpkin  on the doorstep of an empty house, rotten on the second wee