After Jacob, I found a surgeon in Chicago. He sliced me deep, to bone. He played a flesh game with me. He played it well because that's all he knew. That's all I deserved. Sometimes he would divide me, not for sharing or for auction, but to place me like trophies or awards on little stands that were only there to hold fragile things. He bought me things that I didn't need. Things meant for another woman, wrapped so tight that they were suffocating.

When the surgeon was done with me, a banker in Toronto tried to piece me back together. He wore blue for the Leafs and blue for the Jays. He talked about the weather and slid craft beers across sticky tables hoping that I would catch them. I wasn't good at catching. He said he lived for the moment, and quoted DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street as he moved his hand from my knee to my inner thigh, smiling eagerly. He asked if I was down with pretzels and playoff beards. He wanted a girlfriend that his friends would praise. Not one that could outdrink them every night and then crawl into their beds when she felt hollow. The banker knew nothing about a life of moments.

***

Before the surgeon and the banker, there was Jacob.

We borrowed from our parents to build the house. Our own place of logs and grey stone. Jacob was a carpenter so I trusted his hands. He built us a beautiful home that we moved into on a Tuesday morning. I could smell the nearby lake in the air and on our clothes. We drew plans together for furniture placement in bright-yellow chalk and spilled wine on the naked floors. We made love, spread wide across our empty space.

We filled our home with things. Jacob's tools and my books. We filled it with our friends and relatives and on one occasion the couple from across the water. He was a lawyer and spoke in words that were bigger than his mouth and she—well, she knew who she had married.

Then we filled it with baby clothes. Jacob split his time between working in town and asking me how I felt. He was helping to restore a church, some city project. He joked that we would marry when it was over, when his work was done like his lord and savior, his hero JC. He'd incorrectly quote the Bible and outline the cross over his chest and I'd laugh and say we were sinners already. A child before marriage I'd mutter.

Some days Jacob would lead me out back and tell me about the trees. He pressed his hands into the bark of the sugar maples and carefully scribbled in a notebook. His father taught him how to get the sap out. Jacob's father was half Ojibwe, they called tapping 'sinzibuckwud' to draw from wood. Jacob wanted to be like him, though he cursed at him through the phone sometimes. Together we found a healthy birch. As I grew our baby, Jacob started on a treehouse. He finished it when she turned four. He said a good treehouse takes time but could last at least twenty.

Our girl was doe-eyed and knocked-kneed. She was her father's child, liked to run her hands across the floors and the walls, liked to feel the grooves in wood. When Jacob brought us into town, we bought local cheese curds from the grocer. He would feed her the big pieces one-by-one. She ate them slowly, delighted when the freshest ones squeaked between her teeth. During Sunday service, she was too young to understand how to behave and would jump from pew to pew while the choir sang. Jacob didn't mind, he thought she should run wild at that age and he'd remind me that he was in good with the pastor.

She also liked to climb. She was reaching for a branch when she fell. Our baby was seven, the treehouse only three. It wasn't fair how I blamed Jacob. Building things was all he knew. Sometimes birds just drop from their nest. Sometimes mothers can't catch them. We fought hard to try and accept this. Then we just fought. When we decided to end, we settled on keeping only our moments with her. I took the simple ones. And on the last drunken night we covered everything that Jacob had built in gasoline. We started out back with the treehouse and lit the match.

***

Now, there is a man much younger than me. I met him at his gift shop in Baton-Rouge. He is proud that it is his. Said it was passed down for generations. He loves to dance and I call him restless. He calls me Birdie, because I always warn that soon I will migrate back. He knows how to two-step like his grandfather and has gold in his teeth. He introduced me to his mother who made gumbo and cornbread and smelled like country jasmine. His daughter's name is etched into his forearm and he tells me how she can spell better than anyone in her class. I run my hands over her, over him, feeling the parts of his raised skin. I tell him the things I couldn't tell the banker. I tell him about the birch tree and the smell of ash. He too, often whispers about his old life, of bruises and strangers. He says my sad eyes curve like willow branches as he holds me close. At the airport he hands me a crystal hummingbird, bundled tight, and makes me promise to come back.