gray (it’s, like, 3 AM), but bright, like a spotlight, and your dad’s voice whispers—Oh, she can turn on the waterworks, here we go—but you’ve hit bottom in a fucking well, your phone has no signal and your

like last year, when you were late and rushing and pitched down the steps, and the twist sent shocks that split your thigh for two months, but you kept your limp secret, not wanting to hear about Taking responsibility, because after your mom left, your dad paced a lot and went on about Taking responsibility, especially when he’d been drinking, and it was late at night, and you were trying to sleep, and if you ask him if maybe he could talk about it tomorrow, he bends close, his wet lips by your ear—No one wants to listen to you—and you, a mouse in a hole where

is like metal, like a rifle barrel, but there are layers of dirt, some damp, some sandy, and the dank coats your skin, because you’ve been down here for an hour, and

are licking your neck, and mosquitos are guzzling, even down here—they’ve bloomed in the

but you didn’t bring any water when you took off the rusty screen and went out

and dropped into the shrubbery below, and now you’re through a different kind of window, but who the fuck leaves a dry well in the middle of a field with a rotten board over it, so that anyone, any person who can’t sleep, any normal person who takes a normal walk at night would crack that board, and paddle air, and—stop—leg numb (could be broken), swallowed, no service, and you’ve been down here two and a half hours already, and the spotlight overhead is lighter and shot with pink, and the soft dirt walls would be too hard to

like you did that one day, when your dad took you to the beach, and the fog rolled over the sand, and your dad marched on ahead, and you wandered to the sandstone cliff and dug your fingertips into the grit, into unsure cracks, and you scaled twenty, thirty feet up, and you were over a channel lined by shards of boulders where boiling gray water sucked in and flushed out, and you made it so far up, your head was level with the top, but you couldn’t get over the seagrass lip, and you had to ask some other dad who was up there with his family on the view trail, to give you a hand (which he did), and it was so

like falling down a well, because if someone does happen look down here and agrees to help, there’ll be videos posted, and comments, and your dad squinting and shaking his head, and so much fucking hassle because the human body is so fucking heavy (especially yours) and no ladder would be long enough, and a rope would need some kind of crane, and they’d have to drive it in—but, you’re so fucking

and you’re eating dirt and sucking damp stones, and it’s been five hours now, and a shelf of daylight slants into the top part of the hole like a real spotlight, and the sky behind it is wispy blue, and maybe something will happen, because you were getting

as in, you were going to get your driver’s license, as in last Thursday, a girl in your biology class invited you to hang out with them at the mall and get makeovers (makeovers?), and maybe it was real (you turned her down), and yesterday, you helped your dad plant a tree where you dug the hole, and he held the skinny trunk upright, and you shoveled in the dirt instead of the other way around, so maybe he wasn’t so strong anymore, and, besides,

stick their roots through the sides of wells, don’t they? Thick fingers, elbows you could hold, and maybe you wedge yourself up, your good leg and your back, and maybe you could shimmy, some kind of super worm, your bad leg doing the best it can, and maybe you could get yourself high enough that you could lift yourself out, or at least get a signal and call someone, and at least try, because, fuck it. Fuck your dad. Fuck the cringe. Fuck it all.