the bottom near the rusty drain. A dolphin approached from the far end of the tank and glanced at me as it swam past my view. I sat perfectly still and stared at her—him? This dolphin's presence—so acutely aware and intelligent—overwhelmed me. I looked at the dolphin and it gazed directly back at me, and then swam on. A sense of homesickness hollowed me out.

There would be no others. And then death.



There are woods behind my grandmother's house so thick that sunlight gets trapped inside them. As children, my cousin Tabitha and I were small enough to explore. We'd crawl beneath the vines and briars on our bellies. Felled trees rotted from the insides and were filled with ravenous pine beetles.

In the middle of the woods is a clearing where red wheat grows. An abandoned rusted oven sits in the middle, tilted into the earth. Remnants of white paint punctuate the stripped and weathered aluminum; moss seeps from the right-angled seams. My cousin's brother looked inside it once. He ran home fast and let the woods cut him up..

Climbing over the rotten logs at the edge of the clearing I see the manufactured straightness of the oven's frame, its alien parallel lines anchored into the field by fine networks of vines. I look over at Tabitha and she nods. She grabs my hand, her nails caked in dirt. She pulls me toward it and the wheat parts to let us through.

Her nails dig in, cutting crescents onto the back of my palm; we reach together toward a dirt-caked knob. I do not want to open it. Tabitha shoves me towards it with her free hand, simultaneously letting go of my own. I fall forward. I grab the door to keep from hitting the rocky ground, jerking it open with a grating noise of metal. I feel smoothness pass over my skin and recoil backwards, stumbling into Tabitha. She is frozen and staring straight ahead, but not seeing.

And I see this crouched reptilian figure framed within, its face obscured by the shade. I know it is looking at us both. We are frozen and stripped bare by sunlight and watching it as it begins rocking itself, side to side on its haunches, shifting its weight from foot to foot—the oven's floor creaking and bowing. It moves slowly, precisely,

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