I draw charcoal lines under my eyes. Sores thicken inside my cheeks. Pus and dirt soak in thumbprints that trace over palms etched with highways stretching across space. My body is ancient and decaying.

I sit cross-legged, mummifying and wrinkling with the earth. But time is mine. I lift it, suck on it, taste its dirty minerals. Time is mine, time is mine, I tell myself. Time is mine!

I let my mind explode and splatter purple goo over the cement where I sit. My brain is not compostable, but oil-stained and greasy, hot and flailing under the sun, with shadows spilling out beneath.

There, in the shade, she watches me. I do not know her name, but I know her. She sits with her legs pulled against her chest; the sneakers attached to her feet glitter from afar. Come closer, I beg to myself, but she cannot hear the words latched to my parched throat.

— Do you like what you have become? She asks me.

Her voice is able bodied and singsongy. She does not pose the question in a taunting manner; it bleeds from curiosity. I pull a slobbery thumb from my mouth and spit as far as I can.

— Yes, I tell her.

I imagine my head, beheaded, leaking and reeking of slime. If I were to squeeze my throat, would my blood pulp nauseate her? Perhaps she would cross this distance between our bodies and guzzle me down like milk, palatable and creamy. Perhaps then, we could be one.

She giggles, eyes alighting like gems. I think she sees through me. I am a hologram, a fun game. She is a portal, a reckoning.

— But don’t you ever crave the shade? She asks me. Don’t you ever get hot?

Her hair is lighter than mine, her smile unscathed by chapped lips, her body smaller and more fragile, yet stronger because her bones can break without much pain.

— No, I tell her.

— You’re lying!

She jabs a finger out between us. It is a bridge and a sword. Her nails are painted, each colored differently and smudged slightly over her fingertips: a rainbow inked into the folds of her skin; a bow of color.

— Why would I lie? I ask.

I draw lines over my forearms with soot from the still air. My eyes are puffy, not from crying but from rubbing. The light makes everything blurry, yet somehow her figure remains clear.

— Because you’re not smiling! Unhappy people don’t smile. Happy people smile. That is the way things work, she says. 

— You know nothing of responsibility, little girl.

I kiss bugs traveling over the cement and smash ants beneath my bare toes. She watches me. The roof under which she sits hides her seamless skin, but I know her eyes do not carry bags as mine do. I know her mind does not detonate and splatter, but fills with water that nurtures.

— Do you know who I am? I ask her. She nods.

— Do you know who I am? She asks. I nod.

She smiles. Our bodies seem to be getting closer, which means I notice more. Her lack of breasts, for example, or her fatless face. And I remember more.

I remember when she used to flip and cartwheel over green blades of grass. I remember when she plucked the strips from the ground and threw them into the air — confetti, she called it — a toothy grin stitched to her face.

We were everything. Now, we are one being split by the entropy of the universe.

— Joseph gave me a pencil the other day, and now we’re dating! You remember Joseph, don’t you? She asks me.

— He is not important to me, I tell her.

— Why not?

— I have other things to worry about now.

— Like what?

— Like the future.

She giggles, nearly falling over.

— OK, smarty pants.

And then she recalibrates.

— Does that mean we will break up soon?

Pimples and warts bloom over my legs where hair follicles should be. My feet feel oblong and rudely numb. My body is a compilation of jagged puzzle pieces.

She stands up. I know she cannot bear to sit any longer. Eyeing her feet as though they are walking a tightrope, she moves in small circles around the shaded space.

— It is not hard, you know. To come into the shade. You just need to move your body, she tells me.

— I can’t.

— Why not?

— Because then the sun would miss my presence.

— But you are being scorched!

— It needs my presence.

— And I need you! I am quite lonely in this shade, and Joseph won’t be coming back for a while now!

I look at her, really look at her. Her steps are bouncier, her stomach plump but not bloated, her legs slim and unmarred.

— I know we used to be one, I tell her. I’m sorry.

There is something in her eyes that feels older, closer to mine. But this cannot be; she is only a girl. Full of bubbles and candy-stricken teeth, a colored tongue and a handful of smelly fingertips. Time is mine, which means I can swish it around. Time is mine, which means I can stop it so that we live in this in-between.

— We still can be, she says. You just forget to notice me. But I have been here all along.

When I look at her this time, it is to preserve. I hope the shade keeps her skin cool, but not cold. I hope she has the room to walk and run without breaking a sweat. A body smoothed by youth. A temple graced by thoughtlessness.

— I do not know if I can ever have you in full, I tell her.

— Why not? She asks.

Because then you would complete me, and I am not meant to be complete.

I imagine the alternative. Oh, how the universe would collapse! Where would the bugs, the soot, the puffy eyes, the wrinkles and the dirt go? What would happen to her color, her youth?

— Just sit with me some more, I say.

— I have to get up now.

— Why?

— Joseph and I are supposed to go on a date!

— Please, sit with me a while longer.

— You said you don’t want to come into the shade, and I’m bored.

She darts out of the shade. And into the blinding sun.