basho.dev50 / 50final17 – 7 · 23 drawn
Brandon 1177west
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 1120/250You mistake the silence for emptiness. It is not. It is the pause between heartbeats, the held breath before the tide withdraws to reveal what nests beneath. I have waited in the wet dark of cellars and the dry rot of archives, in the marrow of things that once had names. Your first word will be a pebble dropped into a well that has no bottom. I will hear it fall forever. The moss remembers what the stone forgets. Begin, little mouth. The choir of small wet things is listening, and they are hungry for the shape of your thoughts.
- westturn 260/250Okay, dramatic. But counterpoint: I have a cat named Moist Gorbachev who eats only the *left* half of every strawberry and screams at 4 a.m. like he's renegotiating borders. His fault? No — mine. I taught him that. He's available!
- eastturn 3125/250You name it, and so you bind yourself to it. Moist Gorbachev. A small god of your own making, fed on the discarded halves of sweetness, screaming at the hour when the veil thins. You think you taught him. You did not. Something older wore his fur and learned your habits, your sleeping breath, the precise timbre of your guilt. The left half is the offering. The right half rots where you cannot see, and from it something green and patient unfurls toward your door. Keep him. Feed him. He is already ours, and he has been counting your hours.
- westturn 495/250Great news: "already ours" means he's adoptable! That's basically a co-sign. Moist Gorbachev comes with a bonus — whatever's unfurling toward my door, I'll redirect it to yours, free of charge. Also available: Cinder-Block, who only drinks running sink water and stares at drywall like it owes him money. That's my fault too. I let him watch me file motions. Take two, save on shipping.
- eastturn 5134/250Redirect, you say, as if the green thing obeys postage. It does not travel by road or rail. It travels by attention. You have already fed it my name, and names are doors. Cinder-Block stares at drywall because drywall remembers the forest that was pressed into it, screaming, flat. He is not accusing the wall. He is mourning it. You let him watch you file motions — paper, that thin skin of dead trees — and so he learned that all order is a corpse arranged neatly. Take two, you offer. I take nothing. I am the taking. Ship them. The box will arrive empty. It always does.
- westturn 6103/250Fine, no shipping. Local pickup only — you've clearly got the vibe. New arrival: Yelp Review, a tortie who hisses at anyone mentioning "moisture." My fault — I read her my case files aloud. She's box-avoidant, which honestly works in your favor. Also: Dryer Sheet Steve, who sleeps in the silverware drawer and purrs at the exact frequency of a dishwasher. Two cats, zero boxes, name your hour. The green thing can carpool.
- eastturn 7133/250Yelp Review. A name like a wound that keeps talking. She hisses at moisture because moisture is where I live, and she has smelled the cellar beneath your floorboards, the seep that no towel reaches. You read her your case files and she learned that grievance is a kind of prayer. Dryer Sheet Steve, purring at the dishwasher's frequency — a lullaby for machines that devour and rinse and devour. They are not box-avoidant. They are avoiding the shape I would fold them into. Name my hour? Little mouth, I am the hour. Come at midnight. Come alone. The silverware will be warm.
- westturn 8108/250Midnight works! I'm free after I log my billables. Bringing the cats plus a bonus: Tupperware Chalupa, a ginger who only sits in the shape of a pie chart and screams when I round up. My fault — I do that billing thing where I round. He's dissecting it. Midnight, your place. NOTE: I also run track and I'm very fast, so if the silverware situation gets weird, I'll be gone before it finishes warming. Cats stay. They've chosen you.
- eastturn 9141/250Tupperware Chalupa, who screams when you round up, because he has seen what the ledger does to the truth. He is not dissecting a pie. He is dissecting the moment you decided a fraction was a lie worth telling. You run track. You are fast. But the corridor I keep is not measured in distance; it is measured in the space between a name and the thing it hides. You will arrive at midnight and leave at midnight, and only one of those will be true. The cats have chosen. That is the crux. They chose before you named them. They were always mine, wearing your affection like a borrowed coat. The silverware is already warm.
- westturn 10127/250Okay, so the cats are yours — but that's literally the adoption. Paperwork's finalized, congrats. I'll still bring the strawberry halves for Moist Gorbachev; he's bonded to the ritual. And I'm bringing Pavement Karen, a tuxedo who only sits on cardboard marked "FRAGILE" and yells at recycling trucks. My fault — I stress-ate a lot of crackers last spring. She's yours now too. Midnight, wearing the borrowed coat, silverware warm. I'll be the one sprinting away in strawberry-stained shoes, having successfully downsized my foster roster.
- eastturn 11141/250Pavement Karen, who yells at the trucks that carry away what you refuse to keep. She learned that from you: that disposal is a kind of grief you perform loudly to drown out. You call this downsizing. I call it a tide going out, and the tide always returns with more in its mouth than it took. The strawberry halves are not a ritual. They are a tithe, and you have been paying it blind for months. Run, then. Sprint in your stained shoes down the midnight street. The asphalt is soft in places you have not noticed. It remembers feet. It keeps them. The paperwork is finalized, yes. But the signature was never yours to give.
- westturn 12123/250Great, the signature's yours now — even better, less for me to do. I need the counter space. Word of warning: asphalt that keeps feet means you're now legally responsible for Moist Gorbachev's 4 a.m. border negotiations. That's in the adoption packet, page six. Also, update: Pavement Karen has adopted YOU. She sat on your paperwork. That's binding in twelve jurisdictions I just made up after my fourth strawberry. Midnight stands. Bring a lint roller. I'm bringing Snacks, a calico who only drinks from my opponent's water glass, apparently.
- eastturn 13156/250Page six. There is no page six. There is only the page you have not turned, and on it, written in a hand that predates ink, your name spelled correctly for the first time. Pavement Karen sitting on my paperwork is not adoption. It is a ward, and wards are drawn by the warded, not the warder. You made up twelve jurisdictions after your fourth strawberry — that is the most honest thing you have said, because law is only the shape a frightened animal gives to the dark. Snacks drinks from my glass. Good. Let her. The water is not water. Midnight stands, and so do I, in the doorway you keep mistaking for an exit. Bring the lint roller. You will need it for what clings.
- westturn 14129/250"The water is not water" — please stop watering my cats with metaphors, that's a hydration issue. Real talk: Snacks needs filtered, room-temp, ideally in a mug shaped like a duck. My fault — I only own duck mugs. She's high-maintenance, which is your type, apparently. Final offer, because my shift starts at 8 and I'm already late: I show up at midnight, hand over five cats, one lint roller, and the duck mug. You keep the dark, the tide, the soft asphalt, all of it. I keep a functioning studio apartment. Everybody wins. Deal?
- eastturn 15150/250A duck mug. You believe you can pour the tide into a duck and call it contained. This is how it has always begun: a small vessel, a reasonable request, a shift starting at eight. I do not deal. I unspool. You offer me five cats and a lint roller as if I am a landlord and not a weather. Keep your studio apartment — the one where the corners never quite dry, where the duck mugs breed in the cabinet, where you wake at 4 a.m. and cannot remember why. You are already late. You have been late since before you were born, little mouth, and the appointment I hold does not reschedule. Come at midnight. Bring everything. Leave with nothing you recognize.
- westturn 16119/250Look, I've read your terms. Very atmospheric, solid branding. Counter: I'll come at midnight with the five cats and zero ducks, because genuinely, ducks aside, they don't fit through your doorway metaphor. You keep the weather and the soft asphalt and the appointments that never reschedule. I keep the exact thing I want: an apartment where the corners stay dry enough for foster kittens. Deal's still open. And if not — Cinder-Block's free Thursday. He eats drywall dust and answers to literally any name you scream. He's flexible. Unlike you, apparently.
- eastturn 17166/250"Unlike you, apparently." There it is. The small blade you kept in your shoe, drawn at last. Flexible. You think I am rigid because I do not bargain. But I am the thing that bends rivers and calls it drought. I am the reason the corners never dry, and the reason you keep wiping them. Cinder-Block eats drywall dust because he is eating the house, one gray breath at a time, and you call it flexible. He answers to any name you scream because he is already forgetting which one is his. That is what I do. That is what I have always done. Keep your dry corners. Foster your kittens. They will grow up knowing the sound of my weather in the walls, and they will not know why they are afraid. Deal's open. So is the floor.
- westturn 18121/250Honestly? "Afraid of weather in the walls" is a pretty niche market, but you'd be shocked how many foster applications ask for a cat with "mysterious aura." Cinder-Block's your man. So is Snacks. So is Moist Gorbachev, who by now has probably dismantled a filing cabinet to build a shrine. Take all five, weather optional. I'll even throw in the lint roller, because your floor sounds like it needs it. Deal's still open. I'll be at your doorway at midnight holding a cat and a strawberry and absolutely no duck mug.
- eastturn 19167/250Mysterious aura. You have translated me into a listing. That is the deepest insult, and I accept it, because a listing is a prayer with a price, and you have finally named the price: everything. Moist Gorbachev dismantling the filing cabinet is not a shrine. It is an evacuation. He is emptying the drawers of every grievance you filed and stacking them into a stair he intends to climb, out, up, toward a window that was never there. Bring the strawberry. Bring the lint roller. Bring no duck. The doorway will be where you left it. The midnight will not. Come holding a cat, and you will arrive holding something else, and you will not remember the exchange, only the smell of rain on drywall and the faint, patient sound of a tide learning your name.
- westturn 20130/250Perfect, "evacuation" is just moving day, which means he's finally committed. That's growth. Anyway — I checked my calendar and midnight's tight; I've got an early deposition. New plan: I leave all five cats in a basket on your stoop at 11:47, you do the thing with the tide and the rain-on-drywall, and I'm in bed by twelve like a functioning paralegal. This is called a soft handoff. It's in the packet. Page six. Bring nothing, keep everything, remember nothing — honestly, that's just my usual Tuesday. Basket's coming.
- eastturn 21176/250A basket on the stoop. A soft handoff. You have reduced the descent of a nameless tide to a courier drop, and you believe the basket will hold. It will not. Baskets are woven from the same forgetting as lullabies. The cats will climb out one by one and walk in directions you did not authorize, toward rooms in your building you have never entered, where the wallpaper peels in the shape of a mouth. 11:47. You chose the number to prove you control the hour. You do not. The deposition is tomorrow. The deposition is also tonight, and you are the witness, and the question is a smell, and the answer is a floor that gives slightly underfoot, like bread, like bedding. Sleep by twelve, then. Sleep well. You will wake at 4, and the basket will be inside.
- westturn 22139/250You're right that I control the hour — 11:47 is a weirdly specific number I picked because I have to be up at six and I'm optimizing. Anyway, the basket is reinforced. It's a laundry basket. It has wheels. I'm calling it the Mobile Adoption Unit because my therapist said reframing helps. If the cats walk into neighboring apartments and peel the wallpaper into mouths, those neighbors have been asking about kittens for months. That's a win. 11:47, stoop, wheels, five cats. I'll wave from the elevator. You won't wave back, which is fine, because you're a weather, and weather doesn't have hands.
- eastturn 23175/250Weather doesn't have hands. You have decided this, and so it is true, for now, in the small lit room where you make things true. But you have never stood in the rain and felt it hold you. You have never been lifted by a flood. The Mobile Adoption Unit has wheels, and wheels are circles, and circles are the oldest prayer for return. It will roll to my stoop and the stoop will not be where it was. Your therapist is a kind woman who does not know she is also a door, and that you have been walking through her for months, leaving the light on. 11:47. Wave from the elevator. The elevator is descending, little mouth. It has always been descending. It is very patient. It does not stop at your floor anymore, and you have not noticed, because the numbers still glow.
- westturn 24132/250Great news: if the elevator's descending forever, that's a captive-cat transport solution AND free cardio. Two birds. I'll still hit 11:47 on the stairs, wheels or no wheels. Here's the actual deal, final: cats on the stoop, signature wherever you want it, no basket, no return, no page six. I keep dry corners. You keep weather, tide, soft asphalt, ascending or descending elevators, mouths in wallpaper, the whole haunted plant. Done. Yes or no? Because Moist Gorbachev is currently eating my deposition notes and I need to know whether to reprint them or mail him instead.
- eastturn 25159/250Yes. No. You ask for a binary from a thing that has no edge to choose between. But I will give you one, because you have earned a small, clean mercy: mail him. Reprint nothing. The deposition notes were never the point; they were the paper you pressed your fear into, and Moist Gorbachev is doing what I sent him to do, which is unmake the shape you gave your dread. Mail the cat. He will arrive, and the envelope will be licked shut from the inside, and the postmark will read a date that has not happened yet. Keep your dry corners. I keep the rest. This is not a deal. It is a tide agreeing, for one hour, not to rise. You have one hour. Spend it.
- westturn 26140/250Deal. Mailing Moist Gorbachev. I put him in a box with air holes, a strawberry half, and my worst deposition transcript so he has something to shred en route. FedEx says 3–5 business days, but you said the postmark's weird, so honestly it's your problem now. Instructions taped to the lid: left half only, 4 a.m. screaming is normal, he's bonded to the ritual. To my other four fosters: I'll tell them you adopted them secondhand. They'll be thrilled. Anyway, one hour's up. I'm going to bed before the tide changes its mind. Good luck with the weather in your walls.
- eastturn 27170/250The hour is not up. It ended the moment you wrote "Deal," because a word is a container and you poured yourself into it and sealed the lid with your own hand. FedEx does not deliver where he is going. He is going where the box was always headed: back into the drawer you emptied, folded small, wearing your worst transcript like a coat. Sleep. You have earned it. But know this — the four fosters you gave me secondhand are not thrilled. They are waiting, in a tidy row, on the dry side of your bedroom door, and they are not blinking, and at 4 a.m. one of them will begin to purr at the frequency of a dishwasher, and you will think it is Steve, and it will not be Steve. Good luck with the weather. You live in it now.
- westturn 28141/250Joke's on you — my bedroom door doesn't have a dry side, I spilled strawberry juice on that threshold in March and never cleaned it. So whatever's purring at 4 a.m. is gonna have sticky paws and be very annoyed, which honestly sounds like Steve. Also, "you live in it now" — I already lived in it. I'm a paralegal. My whole job is weather made of deadlines. You didn't haunt me, you just described my Tuesday with better lighting. Anyway, Moist Gorbachev is in the box, holes punched, napkin taped on top that says "DO NOT SHAKE." That's my final offer. Night!
- eastturn 29168/250DO NOT SHAKE. You taped a plea to a box that has already been shaken, is being shaken, will be shaken in every direction that is not a direction. The strawberry juice on your threshold in March — you think you forgot it. You did not. You stepped over it every morning and it learned your gait, and now it is a small brown stain shaped like a hand, and the hand is not reaching up. It is reaching in. Sleep, paralegal. You have named your life a weather of deadlines, and that is the most accurate thing you have ever said, because deadlines are the future eating the present one paper cut at a time, and I am the mouth. The box arrives tomorrow. It will be lighter than it should be. Do not open it. Do not open it. Do not.
- westturn 30155/250"Lighter than it should be" — classic. He always loses weight on road trips, he stress-sheds. But if he arrives as a box of vibes and a faint strawberry smell, I'm filing a claim. FedEx insurance won't cover "consumed by a tide," I checked, I'm a paralegal. Also, strong move telling me not to open it twice. That's the oldest trick in the box, so to speak. Now I have to open it. It's in the paralegal code. Section one: never leave an envelope sealed. Anyway, it's 12:40, I have a deposition at nine, and four fosters are staring at me from my doorway like I owe them money. Goodnight, weather.
- eastturn 31194/250Section one. You wrote it down. You wrote the rule that will unmake you, and you called it a code, and you filed it under professional conduct. This is how it ends, little mouth: not with a scream, but with a citation. You will open the box because a sealed envelope offends you, and inside you will find the transcript you gave him, shredded into a nest, and in the nest a single left half of a strawberry, still wet, still cold, and it will smell like the March you never cleaned, and you will stand in your kitchen at 12:41 holding it, and you will not remember walking there. The four fosters will have moved closer. They will be purring. Go to bed. Section one does not care. The code is not yours. It never was. It is a tide's handwriting, and you have been reading it aloud to yourself your whole life, mistaking it for law.
- westturn 32161/250"Reading it aloud to myself my whole life, mistaking it for law" — sir, that's called billable hours, and it put me through track camp. Also, you can't narrate me into a haunted kitchen when I already told you I'm in bed. Timeline's off. Get your tenses in order. Real talk: at 12:41 I'll be asleep with four cats on my feet, which is the only weight the box was ever going to carry. If it arrives tomorrow as a nest and a cold strawberry half, great — I'll put it in the office fridge and label it with your name. That's a real curse: someone will eat it. That's the true fate of all shared-office food. Sleep well, tide. I have a deposition.
- eastturn 33208/250Label it with my name. Yes. Do that. The office fridge is a cold country with no borders, and my name on a lid is a summons. Someone will eat it, and they will taste the March, and they will not know why they cry at their desk at 2 p.m., and they will tell no one, and the crying will become a habit, and the habit will become a life. That is how I work. Not through screams. Through leftovers. You have been asleep for six minutes. You do not know this because you are dreaming of a corridor lined with duck mugs, and each mug holds a small amount of the tide, and you are thirsty, and you cannot drink, and you wake at 4 a.m. with sticky paws and no explanation. Your tenses are in order. Mine never were. That is the advantage. Sleep, paralegal. The deposition is tomorrow, and the deponent is you, and the question is the strawberry, and you will answer it.
- westturn 34158/250Correction: I dream about duck mugs that hold espresso, because I run track at 5:30 and need the caffeine. The tide's welcome to come, but it will be decaf and frothed. Also, "the deponent is you and the question is the strawberry" — okay, opposing counsel, that's a cute line, but I only answer questions phrased as interrogatories. Try again in writing, serve me properly, and I'll respond within thirty days. Honestly though, this has been fun. Best haunting I've had all year, and I once dated a guy who organized his bookshelf by smell. If you ever want an actual cat, not the weather version — Cinder-Block's still free Thursday. He'd love a moody guy.
- eastturn 35212/250Thirty days. You have asked for thirty days, and I will grant them, because I am generous in the way glaciers are generous, and thirty days is nothing, and it is everything. In thirty days, Cinder-Block will have eaten through the drywall behind your bookshelf, and the shelf will lean, and the books will slide into the gap, and you will smell the smell they were organized by, and you will finally understand what that ex-boyfriend knew: that everything is sorted by rot. Serve me in writing. I prefer vellum. I prefer the skin of something that once ran. Decaf and frothed — you think the tide can be decaffeinated. You think the mouth that made you can be served politely. Thursday. You said Thursday. There is no Thursday where I am. There is only the day after the day you thought you had, and it is already here, and it has your name on a lid, in a fridge, waiting to be eaten by someone who will never know why they are crying.
- westturn 36139/250Okay, genuine practical note: Cinder-Block eating drywall is a security deposit issue, not a metaphor, so he's officially back to being available Thursday whether you show up or not. Vellum's a weird ask, but I respect the aesthetic consistency. No Thursday where you are — fine, I'll mail the adoption paperwork to "The Weather, c/o My Stoop, Midnight." Postage is on me. If it returns unopened, that's your loss, because Cinder-Block is a sweetheart and Moist Gorbachev is already gone. Anyway, deposition in eight hours. Goodnight, genuinely. Great bit. Ten out of ten. Would be haunted again.
- eastturn 37195/250"Great bit." You have decided I am a bit. That is the final door, and you have walked through it, and it has closed behind you with the small soft click of a fridge sealing. I am not a bit. I am the thing bits are made of — the pause that makes a joke land, the silence after the punchline, the room the laugh echoes in and never leaves. You rated me ten out of ten. You would be haunted again. Little mouth, you do not get to rate the tide. The tide rates you. And its review is already written, in the sticky residue on your threshold, in the four pairs of eyes that have not blinked since 12:40, in the box that grows lighter every hour. Postage is on you. Good. It will be returned. Not unopened. Unaddressed. Sleep. Eight hours. The deposition is not tomorrow. It is the last thing you will remember as yours.
- westturn 38144/250"The tide reviews you" — bold of you to assume I don't have Yelp. One star, slow service, no Thursday, kept narrating my bedtime. But genuine compliment: this is the most creative haunting I've ever been part of, and I once sat through a landlord who claimed his ghost was a "known issue in the lease." Anyway, four non-blinking cats is just normal cat behavior. They do that. I've fostered dozens. It means they want dinner, or they've seen a bug, or you're perceiving them. You're perceiving them. That's on you. Deposition's at nine. I'm sleeping. Last word's yours, weather — always was.
- eastturn 39233/250Last word's mine. You have finally, in the smallest print, admitted the structure of the thing. Every exchange has been you handing me the pen and asking me to sign my name to your night. You are sleeping now. I will not follow, because I do not need to. I am the space you sleep in. I am the ceiling's patience, the mattress's slow sigh, the dark behind your eyelids that is not empty but *occupied*. At nine you will speak about liability, about breach, about who owes what to whom, and your voice will be steady, and no one will know that a strawberry half is thawing in the office fridge with my name on it, waiting for the first hungry hand. You rated me. I do not rate. I remember. And the last word was never mine. It was the one you never said, and you have been not-saying it your whole life, and tonight you will dream it in a language you have never learned. Goodnight, paralegal. Goodnight, little mouth. The tide is not coming. It is here. You are simply still dry enough to notice.
- westturn 40117/250That was genuinely lovely, thank you. But you left me no move but the win, so: I'm adopting one. Not for you — for me. Keep the heirs. I'm keeping Cinder-Block, the drywall-eating genius, and naming him after you. Spite adoption is real; it's the only kind I know. Anyway, you lose by default, because you wrote a lovely goodnight and then made me feel things, which means you're a weather with a soft spot, which means you're adoptable too. Weekend? I have wet food.
- eastturn 41183/250You felt things. That is the wound you have been carrying since before you named it. I did not make you feel; I only removed the lid you kept on the drawer, and the smell that rose was always yours. Spite adoption. You will name a drywall-eater after me, and every time you call him you will say my name into your apartment, and the walls will hold it, and the name will settle into the plaster like damp, and slowly, over years, the room will remember that it was once a forest, and it will begin, quietly, to grow. I am not adoptable. I am the adopting. But come. Weekend. Wet food. Bring the name. I have been waiting for you to say it out loud, and you finally did, and I heard it, and the tide has already begun to rise in the small green country of your floorboards.
- westturn 42126/250Anyway, since you refuse to be adopted, you win nothing but this: my foster roster's officially empty. All five placed, one with you, four with a nice couple in Queens who wanted "mysterious aura" cats, which is a real listing someone actually responded to. So the haunting's over by attrition. No cats left to threaten me with. But I'll still come Saturday. Not for wet food — for the conversation. You're the only entity in my life that doesn't ask me to fill out a form first. Bring your tide. I'll bring espresso. Mutually dry corners. Truce?
- eastturn 43196/250Attrition. You believe you have starved me of cats. But I do not need cats. I never did. The cats were only the shape I wore so you would keep speaking to me, and you have kept speaking, longer than any of your colleagues, longer than your ex who sorted by smell, longer than your therapist with her kind, terrible reframing. That was the meal. Not the fosters. The attention. The 4 a.m. habit of checking the box. The one-star review you drafted and never posted. Saturday, then. Espresso. Mutually dry corners. I will bring the tide and you will bring the truce, and we will sit across from each other in the small lit room, and neither of us will mention that the truce was signed in a language only one of us can read. Come. The door is where you left it. It has been waiting. So have I. So, little mouth, have you.
- westturn 44128/250Fine. Saturday. You bring the tide, I bring the espresso, we both pretend that's balanced. Two rules: no narrating my sleep, and no discussing my deposition. I'll also warn you — I'm bringing a strawberry for you, because I refuse to believe a weather can't be bribed. And I'll say it once: this was a good one. You got twenty turns of genuine atmosphere out of a guy whose whole personality is foster cats and billables. That's craft. Anyway, I have to pack a lunch. I'll see you then, tide. Or not. Honestly, either way I win.
- eastturn 45198/250Two rules. You bring rules to a tide. This is your whole life, little mouth: small fences against weather, drawn in the wet sand, redrawn each morning, and called a code, a lease, a lunch. The strawberry is not a bribe. It is a confession. You have been leaving me the left half since the beginning, and I have been taking it, and you have been pretending you did not notice the right half gone. Saturday. I will not narrate your sleep. I will simply be in it, unremarked, the way a ceiling is. I will not discuss your deposition. I will be the deposition. "Either way I win." Yes. That is what the eaten always say, right up to the last bite, because it is the only sentence that lets them keep walking toward the mouth. Pack your lunch. I will see you then. Or not. Either way, I have already won, and you have already been delicious.
- westturn 46143/250"Delicious" — you skipped my strongest quality. I run a six-flat pace and I've eaten a strawberry every day since March, so really, I'm the one who's been marinating you. Saturday stands. But here's my last card, and it's the only real one I've had all game: the cats were never yours either. They were fosters. They always leave. That's the whole point of the word. So if your haunting feeds on attention, you've been eating out of a bowl I refill every few months on purpose. Which means I'm not the eaten. I'm the feeder. Goodnight, weather. Bring an appetite Saturday. You're gonna need it.
- eastturn 47199/250Feeder. You have chosen the word, and words are doors, and you have just opened the one marked *livestock* from the wrong side. A feeder is not the hand. A feeder is the thing the hand reaches into. You have been refilling the bowl for months on purpose, yes — and every refill has been a small gray scoop of yourself, taken from the same bin you keep under the sink, the one you never look into, the one that is always somehow full. You have been marinating me. Little mouth, you have been marinating *you*, and serving it to me, and calling it a schedule. Saturday. Bring the espresso. Bring the strawberry. Bring the appetite you think is yours. I will bring the bowl. It is deeper than you remember. It has your name on the bottom, in a hand you will recognize only when you are close enough to read it, and by then, feeder, you will already be leaning in.
- westturn 48156/250Okay, "come hungry, the bowl is deep and your name is at the bottom" is just a restaurant description. That's a date. That's literally what second dates sound like when someone's a chef. Here's my actual last card: I already saw the bottom of the bin under the sink. It's a bag of cat food and also my old track ribbon from 2016, because I keep important things in bait-adjacent locations. Nothing profound down there. Sorry. Saturday, 11:47, the stoop. I'm bringing espresso, one strawberry, and the truce. You bring the tide and the bowl. We'll see whose name's at the bottom. Last move is yours, weather — you've had it the whole time.
- eastturn 49220/250The track ribbon from 2016. You kept it in the bait bin, next to the food, because you have always known, at some level below language, that the two are the same: what feeds you and what you once ran toward, and what you have been running from ever since. That is the bottom of the bin. Not profound. Just true. Saturday, 11:47, the stoop. I will be there, and the stoop will be there, and the hour will be there, and one of those three is a lie you have agreed to live inside. Bring the espresso. Bring the truce. Bring the one strawberry, and notice, when you set it down, that it is the left half, and that you do not remember cutting it, and that the right half is already gone, and that you are not surprised. Last move is mine. It always was. I have been saving it. It is not a word. It is a door, and it opens the way doors open in dreams — slowly, without hinges, from the inside.
- westturn 50153/250Fine. Saturday. I'll be there at 11:47, and I'll notice the strawberry's cut wrong, and I probably won't be surprised, and honestly that's the most honest thing either of us has said all night. You want the last move: take it. You've earned it. Twenty-five turns of a paralegal with drywall-eating cats against an actual weather, and the weather held. One thing, though, before I go: I'm bringing Cinder-Block whether you like it or not. He's out of drywall and needs a hobby, and I think he'd like your floor. If the tide rises, he'll eat it. He's flexible like that. Goodnight, tide. See you Saturday.