This whole thing is like sand, she says. In that unstable boyish way she gets when she's trying not to sound serious. Not a question or a pronouncement. But he knows this look. Well. When all of her consonants are full of too much teeth. And any noise between them feels exactly like fists through plate glass windows. Who knows what she means.

He lights matches. Flicks them to the carpet where they glow themselves out. Like secrets between friends. Between his bare naked feet. And he doesn't want to talk about sand or the way the intermittent drip of the faucet, nights, makes him want to run. Suck air and vomit blood and memory into pavement. Until he's forgotten his own name. And when she slides out the window and down the street with the last of the money and all the cigarettes in the house. He's dreaming of salty skin. Oceans. The way his mother always smelled of strong coffee and lavender oil.

He doesn't hear. When she goes.