My neighbor's mind is slowly going. He enters my apartment unannounced, turning his key in my unlocked door. When he opens it, he throws his things on the counter: grocery bags, glasses, his hat. He barks at me in a thick Boston accent—so thick I assumed he was putting it on when I moved here from Seattle. I tell him this is my home, that his is just across the hall. For a moment, he doesn't believe me, until he sees the posters on my wall, which he describes as hideous and immature. "I know those aren't mine," he says, and I help him to his door.

Sometimes I let him stay for a while. He sits down to watch the news, so I sit beside him on the couch. He asks me why I've come to visit him, and I tell him we're in my living room.

He laughs, then I laugh. But I know we're laughing about two different things.

One night, when it's long past his time to leave, he looks at me and says, "I've never loved a thing," then turns back to the TV.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Nothing. Not a woman, not a man. Not even a little dog."

When I moved here, he owned a dachshund named Riley who howled into the night.

"What about Riley?" I ask, and I see him try to think.

"Who?"

His apartment is a mirror image of mine. When we open his door, his kitchen is to the right—mine's to the left. His couch faces the TV; his dining room table, with a single chair, is angled toward the windows. In the mornings, when I eat my breakfast, I watch people pass two stories under mine. I see many of the same strangers, wearing the same coats, hurrying by each day. When I ask my neighbor if he does this too, he plops himself down in his chair.

"What's there still to see?"

I wonder in which direction his mind is fading. If it's like his hairline, the front receding first. He remembers things from long ago—his childhood, his parents, the dog he had as a boy.

He begins to speak as if he still is that boy. He wonders where his parents are and asks me if I'm friends with them.

When I turn the news on, he yawns. He opens my drawers, my closets, observes my unmade bed. "You live here by yourself?" he asks.

I tell him I do, and he shrugs as if he doesn't mean to judge. But the way he hides his face tells me that he does.

Over time, I watch him shrink. First his back slopes, then his head begins to hang. His body curls into itself like a comma. Within months, he's half his size.

"You know Tithonus became the world's first cicada," he says.

His feet hang off the couch. He studies my apartment like he hasn't seen it before.

"You've never loved anything, have you?" he asks.

His voice is small and rhythmic, more of a buzz than a voice at all.

I could correct him, but I've never seen the point.

Eventually, he's small enough to enter my apartment through the gap beneath my door. He rubs his wings and chirps when he tries to speak. He isn't aware of what he's become, so he does not know that he can fly. He curls up inside an empty jar and hums, his voice echoing as if there are many of him, a chorus I find easy to ignore, until it stops.


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