DEAR AQUAFABA,

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For my many sins, they took hope, approbation, and sleep; took my beauty, that made men praise who wished

to sleep with me. How kept back my breath, my droves. That you will never be through being through with me.

Hope Galveston’s equatorial UV reduces collective viral load in your vicinity, the bot dictated. Then a beat dropped. Your fever over 100° for over thirty days, as content you are not to let me in your life, that content. In fact they

spike. In fact this girl and I sit by the pool six feet apart, work complex ritual to serve cold fizzy rosé from my

can into her cup, laugh masked, dance instead of hug. She fixes her slipped bandanna. I pinch my mask at its

nose, lift it away to sip. We pick and choose, cannot be perfect, cannot not try. I don’t need anyone to tell you

when I die, you’ll gladly find out from the alumnae quarterly. Tomorrow it’s the dog’s fifth birthday in the park,

cupcakes at a distance; he takes clonazepam, clonidine. Flat on my back I trip in the anaesthesiologist’s chair,

rich with drug, see god, death, gravity, the one true dragon, purple-green. You used to care. We used to twin.

So I get it now: an article does not appear, a slice on my soft left inner thigh does. Things must stay in balance.

In my vicinity. In twenty-twenty. No ultraviolet makes a difference, we suffocate the same way, when the rip

current dragged me out last summer it could have been an equal end, I will gladly join the silty drink. When

you feel the grit of my skeleton slip between your fingers. Is it worth it, not to have to talk about your feelings.