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When I was little I used to go through the drawers and put on all the creams and draw pictures on my legs with the lipsticks, under my pants. The ends of the lipsticks got blunt and mashy and I hid them under a million tissues in the garbage. Once I stuffed my t-shirt with balled up Kleenex to see what I would look like with breasts; when I tried to flush the tissues, the toilet overflowed and I lied and said I’d used the Kleenex to mop the floor.
    Asher was waiting around for me to come out but I wanted just nothing, I wanted him to yell Goodbye! through the door so that I could be alone in the bathroom, maybe forever. I heard him tell my grandmother about the elevator. I think she’s sea-sick, he said.
    Down near the base of the toilet there were some yellow stains. I could smell the cream-of-wheat boiling in the kitchen. My throat was harsh from crying and then vomiting. My grandmother’s icon of Mary sat there on top of it all: her body held open and her red heart all lit up like an eye.

Accidental Ponds
    The weather was humid and this made the hostel door stick. I threw my weight against it and fell into the room. Your pink sandals and your pack were lying in a corner. You were there too, asleep, face turned toward the window. I had to walk around in my socks so as not to wake you, run the tap on low when I washed my hands. I had come into Rennes earlier in the evening and dropped my bag on an empty bed. There were two keys to the room; I saw that one of them was already taken. Out walking, I measured my steps along a set of canals. It was already dark. I didn’t have a map.
    I sat in a bar on the main street and wrote letters. A dark green awning stretched over the sidewalk but inside the place felt more like a club than a brasserie. Dark wood floor, small tables, no booths. I had left both a boyfriend and another man more than twice my age. I’d left them behind and flown to France, planning to stay for months, but I couldn’t stop writing to them. A couple in their 40s sat at the next table beneath a print of one of Dufy’s bullfights and watched me write. He was drinking cognac. She had that French hair: black, cut straight. The scrape of her chair along the floor as she moved closer and tucked a strand of my own hair behind my ear. This seemed entirely natural. Where are you from, the man wanted to know. Where are you staying. Is there any place we can drive you. When I left the bar I kept checking over my shoulder. It was after midnight and I walked in the middle of the road, beside the parked cars. Someone had left their bicycle chained to a fence and it was missing both its wheels. I learned that there was more than one set of canals.
    I stopped at a gas station to ask directions. The attendant couldn’t let me in because the door was set on automatic lock. He slid open a small window and pushed a hand-drawn map at me. A taxi will take too long to get here, he said. You need to get home quickly.
    At the hostel I rang the bell and waited for a boy with a red mohawk and a dog to let me in.
    In the morning you painted your toes with clear polish: a few bristles fell off the brush and stuck to your nails. You already had a plan with a boy named Nigel. He was driving a car he’d bought from relatives in Holland. He can go places the trains won’t take us, you said. The Bretons believe this was Arthur’s kingdom. You invited me along to see Merlin’s tomb and Morgaine’s lake.
    In the room both of us tried to take a shower. There was a drain, but the floor didn’t even slant. The water spread out like fingers. We stood on the beds and screamed, and hauled our things, bags and shoes, up onto the covers. We had to jump for the door when we wanted to leave.
    You brought me down to the street where Nigel was waiting. He saw me with you and pretended to be glad. The car had only three gears: we drove 80 kilometres an hour all through Bretagne and everybody on the road