I AM IN BED WITH HENRY IN THE SUN-light. His hand is on my hip. We face each other. I slide my hand onto the side of his face.

We stare into each other’s eyes. I have never done this before and it makes my breath catch.

“I am completely infatuated with you,” he says.

VISION

I am about to bloom, I can feel it. I have always been seasonal in this way. I wait on the bed. Waves of warmth rush through me, small fevers that build and recede.

“What are you doing in there?” Henry calls from the living room.

“This happens every few months,” I say.

I have been keeping track on a calendar.

“What happens?” he calls. “What are you talking about, babe?”

My skin has already begun to green. Another blast of warmth tears through my body.

“It’s too late,” I say.

I begin to bloom.

Leaves pierce through then grow up out of my skin. Vines bloom then wind their way down to the floor. Ferns and grasses sprout beneath my armpits, between my legs. It hurts but nicely. Near my upper thigh, a single fragrant blossom emerges from a bud, peeling open to reveal deep purple petals.

I power the whole scene. My body is a rainforest conduit, an entire new ecosystem in our bedroom. I flourish like Brazil.

Henry steps into the bedroom and finds me wild, green, lush. His jaw drops.

“What the fuck, Cassie?” he asks.

But I stay silent to let him see me this way. Then he does the right thing. He takes a step closer, then presses his face into the blossom. I hear him inhale, nodding his face against the softness.

I LOVE HIM WITHOUT THOUGHT or regard. The sky has never been so wide or so blue.

THE NEXT DAY, WE STAND BESIDE THE lake.

“There are 117 million lakes on earth, covering roughly 4% of the continental surface,” he says while our hands are clasped together and all of the doubt rushes from my mind for a moment, his wife receding into the distance, a motionless mountain, her breasts and belly part of the landscape now, nothing to do with us.

MY JEALOUSY DOES FLARE. IN THE evenings, alone, I hurt myself with a series of harsh scenes:

◆Their bodies back together, familiar, gold rings flashing off the nudeness of their moaning pleasure

◆An undying confession of her love written into a letter which he is reading, his heart full of joy

◆Their bodies next to each other in bed, touching, soft and warm, her face buried into my place of his neck

VISION

The shop says JEALOUSY REMOVAL over the door in fat red fluorescent letters. A bell dings when I step in. The entrance gleams white and silver.

“Hey,” comes the drawl from the old man behind the counter.

“Hi,” I say.

The old man has white hair, jowls, and blue eyes.

“You here for the regular?”

I nod.

“You sure?”