“You shouldn’t be in some stuffy old hospital room. You should be out in the fresh air, with all the green and growing things.”

“It’s fine. I do that all day. It’s fine to take a break from it.”

“And who’s going to read poetry to you, if I die? Who’s going to keep your mind green and growing?”

I looked at the others. They looked back at me, stricken. I said, “How about I go see if I can find you something good to eat.”

I turned and left the room. Walking down the hall, I heard the door open and turned and saw Boone looking out of the doorway at me. For the second time, I put an elevator door between us. I didn’t feel like talking, to him or to anyone.

I was thinking that maybe I liked poetry more than I liked poets.

I bought an egg salad sandwich and a green salad in the cafeteria. I texted my mom and said not to worry about dinner for me. I thought I’d stay at least a little while longer, but I didn’t want to be one more person crowding the space, elbowing the others aside for a chance to fluff Viridian’s pillow. I wish she hadn’t said what she did. It made me feel weird and a little angry, like I was some underprivileged child she’d taken on as a project. But maybe that was the cost of hanging around with poets. They looked at you through some kind of poet kaleidoscope and turned you into their own ideas.

I had to wonder what the writers’ conference was going to be like, and if it was too late to back out of it. But I was somebody else who needed the money. At least there would be plenty of other people there, and no one would have to pay any particular attention to me.

There were times when remembering Aaron, missing Aaron, rose up and clobbered me the way an ocean wave hits you in the back of the knees. Suddenly, this was one of them. Maybe everything I’d done or tried to do these last few months had been a mistake, maybe I should have left well enough alone, as my mom liked to say, and forgiven him. I’d been happy, or happy enough. Everybody had their spells of discontent and fretfulness. They put their heads down and got through them. That was life.

I texted Aaron. Just hi, how are you doing? I waited a while, but I didn’t hear back from him and I put the phone away.

When I got upstairs with my Styrofoam packages of food, the others had left, and Viridian was alone. I thought that she was asleep again. I put the food on the bedside table and turned to go.

“Carla.” She was awake.