You try to force a smile for your red-headed friend playing the ukulele, but you worry your teeth look all wrong, like they were grown in someone else’s mouth. She plays a Dispatch song. The band of your youth. The youth that is now on its knees inside you, desperate, delicate as a …

    We met on the puffy cheek of an eight-year-old girl. You were in your teardrop, and I was in mine. I remember the brilliance with which you glimmered in the summer sunlight, seconds before she wiped you away. She sat in the back of the cop car, her tiny hand pressed against the …