And for months we saw each other, months, weeks, in secret you know, and it was thrilling. (laugh) Always the smell of cut grass in the background. We wouldn’t talk much, we didn’t have time, but we had rhythm. Rhythm, we did. (pause) Like Ali when he rode the horse outside the Apollo with the black cowboys, remember, with the red-and-white checkered tie, and how the horse looked so small under Ali, and I looked small under the man with the banana, his shoulder with the stitches still healing, his stomach protruding like a soon-to-be mother, with his navel protruding, an outie, and two bags sitting under the closed eyelids, and when I rode him I touched the belly button and his top teeth would bite down on the bottom lip, the golden teeth and the wide bottom lip, wide, glossy with spit, nose flared, and the yellow always set against the purple of his left hand. He held the banana as we moved, and I didn’t understand. I asked him, why? Why don’t you let it go—

That’s strange, it’s a very peculiar thing—

Let go? He said it as if considering, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. I didn’t ask again. (pause) He ate popsicles whole. Someone was constantly cutting the grass outside the window, a window like this small one here. Once while he slept I tried to pry it from his hand, but, no, he wouldn’t and I couldn’t. I think he did release it when I wasn’t in his company, though, because sometimes the banana was cold to the touch, cold as if it had been refrigerated. By the third month the fruit was too ripe, brown, black, inedible, cold and too soft.

YYYY

As Kendra’s son climbs through the opening in the floor, he sees the woman. First her heels, her bruised ankles, her buttocks. The woman is standing in the corner of the room, facing the wall. Kendra’s son is looking at her from this position, through the opening in the floor.

The woman’s jeans are marked with blood. It’s a small spot, a circle. Another person might not have noticed this mark, but Kendra’s son does. In fact, Kendra’s son takes pride in his ability to notice such things—small details and imperfections.

Perhaps they are the woman’s favorite jeans, Kendra’s son thinks, and this is why (despite her discovery on the previous evening of having bled through the folded toilet tissue, and the green panties, and then through her favorite jeans) the woman still chooses to wear them. The woman never articulated her level of commitment to these jeans, but it’s entirely possible, Kendra’s son continues to think, they might mean something to her.