May dreams she’s on a fishing line and she’s being reeled in. She’s in the back of her backyard, along the fence, and her blue dress juts outward, like something’s pinched the front of it, by her belly, and lifted away. It’s a wire and a hook that’s got her dress, but she feels it in her body, too, like pressure. The line pulls harder and she leans forward, raising her arms a little for balance. It tugs and she’s pulled forward, her feet dragging on the grass. It’s hot and the sun is harsh in the grass, the line of silver bright wire shines, pulling at her stomach. Her yard is a lake, the water brown and metallic, lead-and-tin smoky water- drop type-metal smoothness, clouded over. And her scales are slick-wet, skipping on the water as the end of the line gets farther and farther away, higher and lower, she’s a fish skipping stone, leaping out of the water and thrashing back down. There is no boat, no rod, bobber, just a hook in her gut, stuck, pulling. Barnacles, which encrust the sides of the waves, scratch at her fish-white, tender belly as she’s pulled over them, her fins catching the waves’ edges. Little fins that can’t do anything. The grass is as tall as she is, and her body cracks and strains. The line continues straight between the blades and into her abdomen, the exoskeleton connected to the line like a part of her, another limb that’s dragging her behind it, and her body, tall and thin as the grass, teeters. The bright wire line pulls at her outside so hard it starts to break, like she’s molting, coming off in parts. She has six wooden legs, then the tree legs of the triskelion meeting in the middle between triangles, run in unison, self-assisted. And yet, trudging on two legs that move contradictorily, despite ghosts, she’s grown into a girl again, reaching the back door and going inside.

• May was born in her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother was a midwife. She attended to her daughter, May’s mother, while she was giving birth. May’s mother had requested the large mirror be dragged from her mother’s dressing room and placed at the foot of the bed. May’s mother lay on her side, and her mother reached in with both hands, sliding around May’s slick, little body. She came out, her mother looking from above and straight on, though reversed. • May’s in front of the window and she presses her eyes into her head, making everything have these tight hard angles. She graphs outside out, drawing a map with her vision, and she can see everything all around, rotating in front of her, diagrammed, charted, mechanized. When she squints, her eyes pull out protractors and rulers and have layers of lenses that focus and move and tint everything she’s looking at in an attempt to get a better grasp, her eyes reaching out like mechanical arms. She takes her mother in her mechanical eye hands and turns her around. May takes her mother in her eyes again, and tries to twirl her, but she’s fixed and won’t rotate, can hardly move. She’s a pillar. May’s eyes try to sweep her up. May’s eyes push and pull and twist around her. Finally she budges, some ghost of her mother budges. But then May looks, and her mother hasn’t moved at all. ⇠