The day pales, my love and sorrow. My breaths are shallow. I hardly breathe at all.

The home that no longer speaks to me keeps his camel eyes shut, keeps me from sleeping. My key inside unforgiving locks and everything I need. I sit in the stiff grass, in the meager shadow of our stunted dogwood. The home that ignores me because I left hastily, damning me with his silence. I think about laying in bed, milky in the glow of the streetlamp, tracing the dance of light and shadow over my hips, over the trail of discolored skin leading from my navel; of being housed and held against a beating heat source; of unresponsive blinds gusting open, a sign of life and I'm okay.

Lars, I never cared for Japan.