They’re going to drive her somewhere to be looked at. They said that to her on the way out. We’re going in a car. They were talking to her like some people talk to cats, when they know the cat is listening but know also that it can’t understand words. They talk to me like that too. When they talk to me at all. Always saying everything twice.

It’s true, that she never talks, or looks at anyone. She won’t talk to me about anything, she just sits in her chair all day and grows whiskers.

Listen, please, I need you to ask them something. Please. They don’t listen to me. They say I’m not ready to be listened to yet. In terms of requests they must mean. That I haven’t earned that or them. Something like that. So I need you to ask them to stop letting her daughter into our room. I need them to stop.

When they let her daughter in, her daughter, who’s older than me and fat and wears overalls and squelching yellow rubber boots, goes over to her and kisses her on the cheek. Then she braids her hair, her mother’s hair I mean, into these two limp braids that she leaves coiled in her lap, her mother’s lap. Do you see? And she never looks up, the mother I mean, the woman in the bed under the window. She never looks up at her daughter, and her daughter never looks over at me. When they’re there, by the window together, well I can’t really tell you. Well I can’t. Not really.

I can only say that I curl up into a ball on the edge of my bed or that I sometimes press my head into my pillow and scream or make noises but only like a bird would. Like a crow. Caw caw caw. And I shout. I find myself shouting, Love Cannot Save You. But it only comes out in crow. Caw caw. Caw caw caw. Like retching. It sounds funny now, but I can’t help it when she’s here in the room. The woman’s fat daughter. It can’t go on. You have to tell them that. I shall lose my voice or I shall turn into a bird or I shall peck out all my hair looking for feathers. Do you see it? My hair? It’s already in patches. No. It’s all right. Right now it’s all right. I’m calm. See? I have something else to talk to you about.

Do you have a moment? Caw. No, I’m kidding. Why are patients not allowed to tell jokes? Of all the things they take from us that might be the worst. To be always assumed to be serious. It’s terrible. Listen though, one minute, please. I want to tell you.

There was a boy who lived in the house across from mine when I was little. I want you to be able to see it - my house. It was a big house. I had a pink bed with pink sheets and a bedroom with pink walls. I would watch this boy from my window. He had thick dark hair and dark eyes and he lived alone with his mother in a brick house that had a path leading from the driveway to the front door. On both sides of the path there were rose bushes. Every evening he would come out into the front garden with his mother and tend to them. They each had a small basket and a pair of pruning shears, his smaller than hers, and they would walk slowly through the flowers snipping or trimming or sometimes only just touching until all the roses had been seen to. Then they would walk in again together through the front door. Do you know when I picture them now they’re wearing hats, old-fashioned things. Like gauzy boats sailing on top of their heads, old-fashioned hats for beekeepers they must be. But it wasn’t really like that. Not really, it’s only that I see them that way, now.