She is lashed with tape and wires, fixed with a small clock around her waist that snicks and echoes.

Still, she manages to swim in a turquoise swimsuit printed with loud daisies and she will bury her hot head in your neck and cry over a dropped popsicle. She leaps from chained swings, dress billowing, pink cotton underpants visible before she hits hard grass. She is digging up earthworms for the pleasure of watching them writhe at the end of her finger. She is sleeping with a stiff-furred stuffed rabbit, unbothered by the tape wrapping her arms and legs, the cable curling around her neck.

*

Your sweat runs as you spin the rod to keep the heat even on the glass bulb. Flames undulate less than a foot away, contained inside a 2,100-degree furnace. You bring the rod to your lips. You breathe the heat deep into your esophagus. You blow. As hard as you can, the bulb orange and glossy, expanding into something. What? You're vaguely planning a goblet, but if it grows too large and floppy, you could form a bowl. Something to hold candy or cigarettes. You don't smoke, but you sometimes like to pretend you're a person who would.

*

She stalks to her room, slings the door closed, the crash one tick in a countdown. The solid panel between her and you is more than a metaphor. She's been away for two months, something that was necessary to save her life. To save both your lives.

When you enter her room later, she sits among bits of torn paper watching videos on her phone. She holds her rabbit to her throat. You ask her if she'd like to come upstairs, to play with the kitten, Gretchen. She says no without once looking up at you. She slowly begins to rip another sheet of notebook paper. "Is Gretchen my replacement?"

"A cat can't replace a human." You ruffle her hair, trying to find your way back to something, to some other time. She pulls beyond your reach.

You hope the time away worked, that she can resist adding more crosshatching to her thighs. Thighs that used to be pure milk. Pure innocence. Thighs you'd give your soul to protect.

*

There is someone who blows glass near you Tuesday nights. He wears a tank top which you can forgive because his is a utilitarian plain white and allows you to see the full length of his lanky arms. He is sure as he rolls his vases, turning his glass as symmetrically as if it were a moon, held in by gravity. He rolls you as deftly, over and over his futon mattress until flames lick through you, burn his fingers, char his tongue. You don't introduce him to your little Molotov cocktail because you are sure he will set her off, even if he steps very lightly and speaks in a whisper.

A feather could provoke her. A look from you. A post, a commercial, a song, a photo, a video, a book, a drawing, a thought. Each a possible match strike.

Anyway, your house bulges with lopsided bowls and tchotchkes you would rather he not see. Not judge.

*

She leaves trails of paper confetti leading from room to room. It is evidence that she is trying, is taking out her rage on something other than her own skin. So you trudge through the soft piles. You make her snacks and brew her mugs of milky coffee and ask, gently, if she has homework that night.

When she's in the mood, she forms a teacup with her hands and holds Gretchen in them, carrying her around from window to window or bookshelf to kitchen cupboard, showing her the house. She might be reintroducing herself, too.

*

It would be harmless enough, you finally decide, to let her meet the tank-topped glass blower. Perhaps beneficial. A male in your midst! And one you don't mind being around. One you think you even like. You order deep-fried Jamaican dumplings and cod fish fritters and you all sit around the old art deco coffee table to eat. She consumes every fritter and dabs at the crumbs with her fingertip. You say, "Tell him about the birdhouse you made in woodshop. Show him the trick you taught Gretchen."

When she cocks her head at you, you mime the kitten spinning. She tips her head back and glowers at the ceiling, her throat long and white. "I'm not your trick pony."

He wipes his mouth with his greasy napkin.

Slowly, she wraps her fingers around a glass sphere that decorates the table and was the first piece you blew. She hurls it at the brick fireplace where it smashes into hundreds of small slivers and for an instant looks like glittering ice shards. She begins to crawl toward the wreckage and you caliper your body around her waist, holding her back.

You shout that the broom is in the kitchen pantry.

It was too soon, this gathering. You should have kept the parcels of your life separate. He sweeps the splinters of glass into a dustpan while she squirms in your arms. You wish your grip gave her comfort like it once did, that she would shed her hot tears, molten glass, into your neck and over your hands.

*

You have been waiting, all of her life, for one massive explosion. But, instead of a single mushroom cloud of destruction, it has been a series of pops that you never imagined you'd be able to survive.

And you still, yet, may not.


.