At fifteen, she is staring at the door that the boy once walked in. Now the boy is gone, and she no longer remembers his shadow. She throws shoes at the door because she is so tired of losing a boy to someone else.

*

Dust and lint drifts from the sky of her bedroom. She’s thinking about the boy, staring out her window at the perfectly round mountains, like someone else’s breasts.

*

When the boy arrived in her life, she felt a new kind of luck, and when he kissed her, she became a night owl. But tonight she is a mouse, and the moon is a sad-looking pervert peering down at the gloss of her hair. Her bedroom light is on; maybe that’s the problem. Turn it off, she thinks, if you want anything interesting to happen.

*

Her mother is again crying and drinking alone in the living room. What’s wrong with my little girl? her mother is probably thinking, drowning in martinis. Anyone can fall into these tricks of the night.

*

Now, the girl can see that the worthiest creature in her life is the cat, who settles on the girl’s stomach, purring. We can dream, she says, and the cat looks at her the way a boy looks when he knows he is loved back.