A piece of plastic floats on the sidewalk. Fingers pull up a small horse. A knight, chipped
along the spine. The ears bent back. Not plastic but wood. Mahogany.
The horse swings on the inside of a pocket, fleece brushing back splinters. Water soaks
the fabric in blankets. A steady rock puts the baby to sleep, snot runs down over mouth and chin,
dried.
She wonders what the knight thinks of its movement on the chess board. But she guesses
that it makes sense. Horses jump. But did they feel scared to ride into battle, cracked against the
wood, knocked onto the hard plain?
A puddle pools to beats of a steady drum. Strings like waves of veins that hold a heart
together. A sputter behind ribs.
Ripples die in a destructive interference or rise into the energy of another. Drops kiss
concrete falling from the bridge. Bodies bumping and vessels spider-webb across lungs.
Cars spread water on asphalt. Skittering and skipping from one place to the next.
Weeping crosses light and the ripples turn gold. Rainbows in blue today.
Stormy cheeks reflect streams. Through the concrete cracks, weeds drown underwater
and resemble ancient sea monsters. Did the plants know which ripples would amplify and which
ones would fall into nothing? Growing up from concrete into the flood.
Rain slows but the shadows do not burn off with the sun. One shoe in front of the other.
She turns back from below the bridge and the puddles. Wet hair and jacket soaked through.
Shivering shoulders chafe their sockets. She accepts the cold. The shaking reminds her that
somewhere a part of her holds on, wanting. So why not go a little longer.
She screams.
A rat runs over her shoe along the street and into a dead pipe set into the concrete curb.

A rat falls out of the freezer and grandma screams and falls right onto her ass.
A rat hops out of the toilet and onto the bathroom floor, wet and wiley.
She cries in bed while her brother swings a rat towards her, holding it by the tail.
She wonders why the walls kept squeaking at home.
She crawls into bed, still wet from the rain, the knight asleep in her pocket. It was her
who let the rats keep their nests. Below the floorboards. In the back of an old box tv. She both
loathed them and loved them. Her eyelids weighed heavy, listening to the scurrying between
rafters. Vermin and parasites, she rolls onto her back. But like Bukowski says, the beautiful do
not make it. Flowers from a lover drop their petals and die, rot like everything else. Fingernail
polish chipped and rings lost in water. She dreams of rats. Butterflies and knights hit the
heartwood, curl up and die. Rats gnaw until their teeth bleed. And she dreams of letting them
stay in the home, their home. Sacks of shit together nestled into a mess of insolation, excrement
and old food scraps. The rats bathe in it, while her face turns sour. And maybe one day she will
learn how they do it. Persist in all the ugliness. It was her who let the rats keep their nests. Did
they not deserve a place to call home? Did she not deserve them?
Bones and eyelids peel up before the sun rises. Sweaty and with a nosebleed. Bare feet
grow cold on the linoleum. Dried blood streaks across her left cheek and stains sheets. She leaves
the bed in its tangled knot of blankets. The squeaking has stopped.
The water takes a while to get warm and skin turns red under the heat once it does.
Lavender soaps and rose fill the bathroom. After a while the water runs cold. She shuts off the
tap and stands there for a second, letting all the steam loosen her chest and catch in her throat.
Water pools on the tile. She puts her dirty clothes back on. The knight dry in the pocket.
The phone rings.

“Hullo,” she answers.
“Hullo, Lizzie, ” her mother says, “Just calling to see how you are doing.”
“I am alright.”
“Yeah? Are you sure?”
“I mean things are not the best, but it is what it is.”
“Do you want to talk about it.”
“I don’t think there is a whole lot to talk about. I was doing a shit job, I don’t blame
them.”
“Well it's not your fault, just know that.” She doesn't know if that is the case, despite her
mother’s remark. She came in late, left early, forgot to fill out timesheets, made no effort to
make friends. Most of all, she made the sort of mistakes someone makes when they are not
really there. At least not all there.
Her mother continues, “ I am here if you want to talk, Lizzie, I will keep checking in.”
“Thanks, Mom. I appreciate it.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too, I’ll catch ya later.”
The line goes static.
Legs carry her back to bed, and arms pull at tangled covers. Above, the fan runs round
and round and round. She stands up on the bed and stops the fan. Clammy hands tape the knight
to a fan blade. The knight swings around the room on its leash of tape. Around and around. The
figure hangs loose sometimes and other times it chokes.
She wonders if the knight knows where it is going. Or if it knows where it is. Does it
have a choice up there? Attached to the tape of fate. It must be easier when you are carved and

matched, blended into a sea of black and white. Legs stuck, glued to a platform and position.
Guns pointed forward. Could they shoot themselves free or walk off the board?
So there she is. Knight spinning overhead. Fired a few days prior. Feeling like she should
be screaming. But she does not care. About any of it.
A few days later the tape collects dust. When that happens it loses friction. The little
knight goes tumbling. It lays under the fridge now. Head to the floor, ass in the air. Forever stuck
in the grime of the underthings.
She watches through the window. People let their bikes ride them. The faces of
passengers grow long and weary. Dreamless behind eyes. So she watches them drift. Cars drive
by and clunk and clunk. The bumper drags. When did we stop asking questions? When did we
let the car drive us and the bike pedal the wheels? The same time that the food began to starve
and the water tasted dry.
They stick to their checkered foreground.
The foreground is predictable. Steady. On a black and white board no one wonders what
may lay beyond. The opponent is without nuance. But there is always a beyond. She knows that
now, crumpled under the fridge, face to the floor, ass in the air. Next to her, a rat crinkles its
nose, forming hundreds of creases along its snout. She looks up at it, and the rat looks down to
her, wondering what happened. Its eyes appear glassy and almost red. Rain streaks at night,
traffic lights, and neon signs paint the car windshield. The rat’s whiskers tickle her face and
leave a greasy residue. She is afraid it will take a bite of her.
“Hullo,” chapped lips mumble, unsure.
The rat’s ears curve towards her.

She pushes herself up. Arms slightly sticky and mucked up from below the fridge, from
the underthings. “How do you keep going,” she asks, “when everything seems lost?”
The rat sits, hairless tail curled into its furr.
She rolls her eyes, laughing at herself. The laughs twist hysterically and blend into tears
and welts. Raindrops falling hard from heavy clouds. The rat starts walking towards a hole in the
drywall. “Please,” she cries. “I am stuck.”
The rat turns towards her. “You are never stuck.” Its teeth are yellow and orange. Rusted
over. One of the front teeth is shorter than the other. An ear has bits and pieces torn away. Furr
forked up. Nails too long on its feet.
She sees ugliness. And the smell of the rat finally reaches her nose. She cannot help the
hair that rises on the back of her neck. She loathes it and she loves it. And the rat will continue to
chew through her floorboards and cables and ceiling. Could she live like that? Teeth ripping
through blood and sparks. Not holding on so much as letting go. Alive in oneself: acting despite
the uncertainty that eats at everything that breathes.
The rat reaches the drywall and she watches as the tail disappears into blackness.
She crawls, hands and knees, out from under the fridge. She opens the fridge, an ode to
the rats.
The rats take over the house.
They feast on couch cushions and cabinets.
They sell all her things on craigslist to make rent.
It keeps them going for at least three years.
The home depreciates.
The landlord cannot evict the tenants or sell the place.

The damage has been done.
The rats are left to do as they wish.
And she drives down the highway. East for hours or minutes. Time swept and carried from its
static continuum. Without a goal but with gas in the tank. The sun is setting. The yellow eye
sinks behind the foothills and sends cascades of color bleeding through clouds. Windmills carve
silhouettes. Arms reaching up. She watches, as the wind spins hundreds of somethings. Ripples
among worlds.
She thinks that the wind will be there, when the water runs dry, pushing planes of dust.
And she sees it dance. Wearing dresses of sand.
She wants to call her friend and tell her about the dancing wind, seen through sand. She
has been meaning to call her for a while. But caring kept her from it. Why did friendships need
to be maintained and why did food need to be eaten when the world was dying. She stayed stuck
to the chess board letting herself become a piece. Black and white and impartiality.
The windmills continue to stretch. Burning against orange. Dust gowns dress the dance
of wind. And the ravens caw overhead, curling in the air, like dice tossed onto a table. CDs
striped with rainbows. Steam catching light in pools rising from a mug. A wrong turn. Three
wrong turns in a row. But where is wrong.
Wake up sore and wet. Brake. Love and cry and smile and gnaw until the bones are
sucked of all their marrow. We do have a choice. She thought. Even if nothing matters. Fuck it.
“I am a fucking rat,” Lizzie screams for the wind to carry.
Lizzie pulls the car over for a moment. And dials a number. Her face feels hot. The other
end does not pick up. Windmills spin. Voicemail.