Michaela Gabriel lester lewis takes inventory after the shipwreck her name was not ruthie. nor amanda. it might have started with a painful consonant, sharp, bloody around the edges. lester lewis spreads his fingers, inspects them like foreign territory. whatever the one-handed goddess on the cabinet tries to tell him — he doesn't speak ancient female. she sits upon a letter, a breadknife, a bad case of the jitters left over from 1985. he's sure dandelions played no part in what happened between night and day; who knows why their heads are rolling from room to deserted room now that the oysters are shutting themselves up inside fortified shells. a calendar opens on page after blank page. lester lewis drops to his knees, neatly wiping out a school of memories waiting to be conceived. pink sand, an armadillo armour, a filigree ring arrange themselves as still life in the corner. books accuse him with bold-lettered spines: making love to men with unsexy names, learning to ignore his polka-dot ties, turning a blind eye to bald spots. the bin yawns; lester lewis turns away. a window shade will not shut out the sun; he counts twelve leaks. in the kitchen, bread has gone stale uninterrupted, liqueur has replaced wine. little glasses line the counter — there is a message in this: years of hide and seek, traces of deception, a loss. the clock stops, hopeful, but lester lewis does not notice. he sits on the floor and counts: six drawers, three lip prints, nine tearstains, one crossword: fifteen across — wife, estranged, four letters.

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