Mirrorlight morning and she stands unsteadystill before her own reflection which wavers slightly as if filmed through rainwater and the face there is hers and not-hers and the eyes have gone lowtide dull and she touches her cheek and the cheek answers with a small spark that was not there yesterday and she undresses slowcareful because fabric resists in one wrongplace seamrip whispering where no whisper should be and the denim darkens at the thigh not festival-mud not grassgreen but rustred thin and patient and she counts backward through days looking for explanation and finds none that fits and the word fell arrives and she tries it on and it hangs loose and she says I’m fine into the empty bathroom and the tiles echo back finefinefine in hollow porcelain.

  Showerwater descends in whitewhite columns and the sound is almost kind and she lets it run scalpdown spinealong hipcurve and lower and there the body speaks in electric syllables smallsharp smallsharp and she stiffens without meaning to and tells herself bruise only bruise because bruises flower everywhere without narrative and the red thins and dilutes and threads into the drain in pale spiral and she watches as if observing laboratory evidence and the rabbitmask flickers not before her but in the steamshadow above the tap earshape dissolving into drip and she shakes her head once and the steam becomes only steam and yet the lower ache remains an undertone beneath the water’s hymn.

  Callum’s voice overlays memoryvoice overlays bassline residue and he asks you left you vanished are you sure and the question lengthens into corridoridor between them and she steps into it and fills it with words that almost align—crowdpressure too loud slipped on grass—and each word is neartrue neartrue neartrue and he touches her wrist and the wriststartle travels up her arm before she can sand it smooth and she laughs a beat too late and says it was nothing and the nothing expands like smoke and he studies her face as if searching for subtitles and finds none and the rabbitmask is absent and yet something blank stands where ease used to stand.

  Sitting becomes negotiation and walking becomes anglecalculation and crossing her legs becomes a problem of geometry and she performs these adjustments invisibly adjusting adjusting adjusting while the world proceeds in daylight ordinariness and the meadow hums somewhere behind her in memorytone and she thinks about the grass not rising and the thought arrives too bright and she dims it with repetition nothing happened nothing happened nothing and the repetition becomes rhythm and the rhythm becomes noise and the noise is softer now but persistent like wire under wind and she carries herself through corridors and conversation carefulcareful as if the air has acquired splinters and if she moves correctly and smiles correctly and answers correctly the splinters will remain unseen and she will continue in this new narrow version of fine.