You. You there. You just over there. Two and a half metres away. You, the keen observer of my life. You, the body I dropped from like ripe fruit. You who couldn’t produce enough milk for me, the doctors head-fucked you and told you it was because of stress, your anxiety, you cried at night because I was always hungry, scrawny like a skinned rabbit, red-faced and howling, both of us crying because of your breasts, until you caved and started nursing me on formula, thinking yourself a failure. You the only other person who has wiped my ass. You who changed me after I wet my bed, dreams of standing in front of toilets and waking to feel it pooling around me in my sheets, the shame, who gave us this shame? You who breathed in my face asking, Does my breath stink? You who held out fresh laundry asking, Does this feel dry to you? You who I’ve heard crying, cooking, shitting, talking on the phone, laughing in the next room, two rooms over, on the other side of doors, shut, locked, ajar. You who bathed me, who lathered my body in soap and hot water, no part of me unconsidered, and my reluctance to leave the bath like my reluctance to be born, to leave the amniotic embrace, always a tug-of-war to pull me out. At what age did you stop bathing me? I don’t remember my first bath alone. Did I ask you to stop? Did I drive you out of the room? Or did the feeling creep up on you one night that it was no longer appropriate? When did that first glimmer of shame appear?