The boy was there when the sun rose but he wasn't there in the evening. The boy was there when the sun rose but she didn’t remember his name. When she listened to music, he was back, and only then did she know how much she had missed him. Again, she was a young woman sitting on her sofa listening to lute and guitar as the boy floated back to her. It was morning again, the sun was rising, but the curtains were drawn. The boy was a boy, and she was an old woman and this is how things were. None of it mattered anymore because everything mattered too much. It was if she could take a chance and win the boy back if she really wanted. She remembered all of this now—how he was too many things to her at once, and she had to let him go.

Today my father returns from his sunken ship. Once a year his monkey smile beautifies my mother’s front door. I feel frantic and beautiful, flitting around my bedroom in different hats, pushing escaped eucalyptus leaves back under the bed where Mom promises they’ll ward off fleas. “He’s a charmer with serious issues,” Mom says when she tries to describe him to other people, but I’ve learned not to hear her. Our pebbledash rental is shaped like a box and I hope he won’t notice, won’t say anything about my mother being a “familiar stranger. He promises me his authentic sea captain’s map, and I imagine a path leading to a sunken world without mothers—where I will attach myself like a starfish to his wreck.