It’s so gratifying to see how creative men can be.

My name is Sara McNamara and several of my closest friends have pointed out the hypocrisy of my name.
“Sara,” they tell me. “You have stolen someone’s ‘h’ from their name.”

“My name never had an ‘h’,” I tell them. This is after we’ve gone to a movie, and now we are walking through the parking lot. It is night time. Street lamps shine down mistily on our confrontation.

“Well then, ” one of my friend says, “How do you explain this?” She shows me what appears to be my birth certificate. But it can’t be. The birth year is off by ten years and the names listed for my parents are not my parents.

“That isn’t me,” my voice rings through the parking lot.

My friends wonder now, as they pass the birth certificate among themselves, that, if this isn’t me on paper, then who am I, really?

I have no idea who I am. Except maybe, that my name does not have an ‘h’ in it.

Or maybe they should find a more accurate birth certificate.

Stemming from the view I was afforded during my illness, I witness grasshoppers flying across the plain, undulating through the grass. I press my nose against the window. The windows of the building are sealed. If only I could smell the grass or let me bare feet provide a fun obstacle for the insects. My nurse tells me that she is negotiating a short visit outside. My chances of this visit increase the more money I am willing to pay them. If only it were about money. It’s really about illness. Will they buy that?

The apples are never fair enough, the dough never flaky enough.

Why bother? Because the athlete married the politician and what happened was a pie was made that ended up using fair apples and flaky dough.  Drumming begins, at the dining room table, as this dessert is being served.

The drummer is a teenager who has won a bet from his parents, So he is allowed him to drum at the corner of the dining room, to announce the pie. Although the pie is not important, the announcement of it is. For the athlete has usurped the head of the table from the politician. And no one knows why. And the teenage drummer would like to add drama to this new development.

I have just moved into a small town called Croa in California.  It’s a place so far from any larger town that I forget that this is the same state houses Los Angeles and San Francisco in it.
Between my house and the woods is a meadow. Quite by accident, I’ve lived in this sort of arranged habitat before.  There was a meadow in Wyoming, then in Louisiana. Both with a forest, just beyond that meadow.
The difference here, in Croa, is that woods is really a forest and beyond this forest is as a small lake. There were no lakes at the other places I lived in.
But will this new arrangement really change anything? Probably not. I’ll probably do the same things I did when I was in those other houses in those other states.
But I will, I hope, find some things about this little lake that will perhaps get me to move to a place, in an real earnest way, not the way I’ve sort of ended up here. I want to go somewhere. Deliberately.
But I can’t right now. Because I just moved into this house. And I want to be sure that it isn’t like those other places before I move to another place.

Sometimes on Saturday night, I am so bored, nothing I want to watch on my computer, no one I want to call, no one who calls me, texts me, nothing I want to read or bake or snack on.
But then an elf shows up.
He peeks out from over the corner of my bed. Not as shocking as you might think.  I’ve expected him for years.

He’s an ugly bastard, as I’d always expected. But not so ugly that I wouldn’t let him on my bed. He’s an off-color, the color of mold, with fuzzy edges. He’s got bug eyes and I wonder if he might wear some coke bottle eyeglasses to make his eyes appear smaller. But when ask him if he’d consider wearing eyeglasses, he just rolls his eyes.

He’s quiet, although he does breath down on me in a way that goose pimples my flesh, his steady steamy exhalations, oddly comforting. But that’s all. There is no deep connection between us either. Which is good because I couldn’t imagine such a thing happening.

I don’t know what he does when he’s on top of me. I think about where he might live.  Does he have a job? Is he married? With Children? Before I know it, he’s leaving, sliding  backwards back toward the corner of the bed, until he falls over the edge with a loud thump and disappears, to his own world, I assume.

I am bored for the rest of the night.

He knew us by scent and decided who he wanted that morning. He awoke at dawn and breathed over our beds, a warm spray of peppery notes that made us sneeze.
I sneezed first, so he chose me.  That morning he took me by the hand led me to the warm water where he bathed me, licked me clean. Then he carried me back lay me back down, the led the other one of us by hand, to begin the same process with the other.

Soaking, he went to McDonald’s for brunch.
“Brunch? At McDonald’s?”
His mouth was too full to answer.

The clothing rack was filled. Coats billowed, people squeezed between the aisles. Somewhere, nearby, an escalator hummed.
Out of nowhere a spice rack smiled, waved to the cashiers.
The cashiers, busy as hell, only heard the humming.

There was no one in the tacqueria; not even waitstaff. The dining room was dark. The lunch hour had never happened. Dinner was a bust.

Flint hung from a surveyor with musty shoes. Outside,the restaurant, former employees picketed, their feet kicking up dust from a nearby construction work, whose jack hammers drowned out their protest, dusted their signs, sent passersby passing by faster than ever.

So surprising that I found a cigarette machine. I had not seen one in decades. Even more shocking that a grade-school kid brought money to the machine, fed it, pulled the little pin and out came a pack of Marlboros.

“Hey,” I said to the kid. “Those aren’t for you.”

The kid looked at me as he tapped the top of the pack against the heel his hand, like an old pro.

“Hey,” I amended. “Can I bum one off of you?” My whole face flushed as I asked. I knew I’d get arrested, even though I was just an innocent bystander, had not even bought the cigarettes. Or had I?

I can see myself not being myself. My voice changes, my posture straightens, my bones scream. But it’s someone else. It’s a little boy named Skip with blond hair who picks his nose and talks of being an astronaut.

I am Mexican and this seems funny that I should see myself this way when I’m fat and fifty-five. I think it’s because I’m reclined on my couch, with my fourth beer and feeling sorry for myself. Pity causes me to change color.