In the day room, Queenie says to draw an animal that captures my
spiritual self. I draw a purple buffalo under the stars with a scary
face—blurred eyes, red mouth, white teeth. Queenie asks if I’ve
been sleeping OK, if I’ve had any nightmares recently, perhaps
about buffaloes with humanoid features. “No,” I reply, “but I have
that song about buffaloes stuck in my head. What’s it called?
Home on the Range?” “What are you?” she asks, “a real cowboy?”
I did learn how to lasso a horse on my friend Carter’s ranch. I
wasn’t very good at the lassoing. I just wanted to pet the horses’
necks and tell them my secrets. I have a crush on Carter’s mom. I

can’t stop eating scabs. I hope I never die.

I make a rabbit’s foot out of air-dry clay. I smooth the edges with
water, caking my hands in gooey grey. When I reach to scratch
my face, I slip and smear my forehead, so I look like Simba from
The Lion King when Rafiki marks him with gourd juice. In my
room, as I rinse my face, I think about that scene where Timon
and Pumbaa feed Simba the shiny, multicolored grubs in the
jungle. The first time I watched The Lion King, I thought those
grubs looked delicious. I begged my mom to take me
to the exotic pet store and buy me a bag of bugs to slurp. She drove me
to the store and made me stare into the hissing cockroach
enclosure. Of course, I chickened out. She didn’t scold me, just
took my hand and led me away. As we walked out of the store, a
man with a parrot on his shoulder passed us. The parrot and the
man had the same haircut. My mom and I whisper laughed all the

way back to the car.

After therapy, I sit alone on the Centro bus stop bench. Sparrows
peck the sidewalk littered with stray Takis and fossilized gum.
Sparrows remind me of my grandpa, who babysat me weekends
while my parents played gigs. My grandpa played violin in his
kitchen—always Bach, always with the windows open and
crushed almonds on the sills. Sparrows gathered and chirped, and

his neighbors yelled “bravo!” after he finished.

On the bus, a woman yells about tort reform and the bus driver
blows through stop signs. I don’t mind. The streets are clear and
the woman yelling looks like my mom. The ravens soaring in the
sky are ink blots seeping into canvas. My eyelids flutter. I could
pinch myself awake and make it to my apartment in time for
Wheel of Fortune. Or I could fall asleep, miss my stop, and walk
along the river path by the bus depot with deserted shopping carts
and chirping crickets. It’s warm inside the bus. A man across the
aisle adjusts the tubes connected to his oxygen tank. I’m afraid of

dying, not death.