Figures twenty through twenty-seven, but who’s counting?

The question of which losses are permanent is open, as is that of which ones are desired. The sky at night is open. The bodega is open, almost all the time. The books are open, too, even the ones that have been forgotten, willfully or not. Even those obscured by a blur.

I would like to count embarrassment as a loss—the undue kind, at least. E and I share that wish with each other, and we offer it to you.

AUTOECIOUS END-STOPPED TANKA

E and S sat in the living room on pillows, backs against the wall. Stella had moved into the second bedroom; her mom had kicked her out for refusing to pay rent. E’s laptop was open to the dictionary. The earliest known appearance of “musical chairs” is from 1877, Merriam-Webster says; no further citation is provided.

Other terms added in 1877 include:

autoecious

autogamy

belly button

bookie

Camembert

check valve

deathwatch beetle

Decembrist

end-stopped

erotomania

field guide

fruit bat

gang hook

gegenschein

hoopla

hornswoggle

ingot iron

in re

jokester

jungle cat

kulak

limbus

macromere

nerve cord

ontological argument

primary root

rain tree

safety net

tanka

turnbuckle

underfur

vespid

work camp

xenophobia

yantra

and zymogen

They sat cross-legged on the floor looking up definitions. Behind the closed door, Stella was singing, or warming up to sing: unbroken arced scales moving from chest voice to head voice and back again. E and S looked at each other; nobody knew Stella sang.

They agreed Stella’s voice was beautiful. They agreed it was time for a drink. They laughed about how agreeable they were, but not without voicing their fear it would end. They agreed they should close the screen, but not before agreeing on the best word from the list. Gegenschein: a faint light about twenty degrees across on the celestial sphere opposite the sun

probably caused by

backscatter of sunlight by

solar-system dust.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you: Adrian Shirk, Akin Akinwumi, Amanda Annis, Ann Holder, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Barbara Browning, Bushel Collective, BC Revolutionary Feminisms Reading Group, BC Writers Group, Carla Valadez, Christopher Grau, Claire Donato, Communist Research Cluster, Daley Farr, Dana Spiotta, David Naimon, Deepika Marya and Leah Wing, Ellie Ga, Erika Stevens, Gordon Dahlquist, Iris Cushing, Jared Fagen, Jennifer Kabat, Jonathan Lethem, Kellie M. Hultgren, Laura Taylor, Laura Wood, Lewis Freedman, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Lizzie Davis, Lyric Hunter, Marco Breuer, Marit Swanson, Mina Takahashi, Mirene Arsanios, Pareesa Pourian, Renee Gladman, Roz Foster, Simone White, and volunteers on the Watershed Post liveblog (2011); the staff at Coffee House Press; Headlands Center for the Arts; my family and my friends. This is a work of fiction. Some of the places and situations are based, to some degree, on places that exist and events that have occurred. The characters populating these places and situations are made up.