I.

At sixteen, I elected to testify in court against my grandparents, who were embroiled in a seven year long civil suit (and appeal, appeal, appeal) against Skyline Steel Inc. By that time, I had read so many depositions detailing the death of my father that I had settled into the facts: the crane truck going approximately 85 miles per hour, the shot from the news helicopter of a tarp covered body on the freeway, the label “burnt beyond recognition” next to the autopsy table.

When my grandparents sued for pain and suffering compensation the company that hired the man that owned the truck that plowed into my father’s work van, I sat on the other side of the courtroom, found myself secretly rooting for a corporation over my own flesh and blood, reliving the details they skewed, dishonoring the memory of my father and the name of my mother without remorse. Seven years and they could not let my father rest in peace. Seven years and we were still hammering out the truths of our family dynamics, my grandparents still bickering with the company over a few thousand dollars as my father’s soul separated from his skin, as I forgot slowly the timbre and cadence of his voice.

In the notebook I clasped in my lap, I detailed every lie my grandparents told in the course of the hearing, took note of every manipulation of circumstance, every date, fact, and figure fudged for the sake of the trial. My grandfather, who had not seen me once in those interim seven years between original trial and appeal, could not stop staring at my breasts. When I told my best friend about it later, sprawled out on her bedspread spilling secrets, she asked if we could talk about something else, anything else. I asked her why. I talk to my mom about it all the time I said. Well, in my family she told me, we don’t talk about death. We don’t talk about that.

In the quiet that lapses between us, her sister hums a lullaby under her breath.

II.

In the second phase of our relationship, I watched Joshua constantly. I watched his twitching piano fingers, took more notice of the way he smelled like soap and flour, slept with his watch ticking softly under my pillow, wondered what it might be like to hold him again. It had been over a year, I realized, since this person I both loved and hated had touched me, but I could not bring myself to leave him. In the magic of one January night in Arizona, warm and mild, I asked him for the time. We sat in stolen lawn chairs and breathed stories, memories, ideas from our lungs. I fell for a man lit up by the stars. Two Septembers later, the heat radiating from our Phoenix streets was not the only thing that felt oppressive. In the mornings I shut myself in the band room, found hiding places amongst friends and in homework assignments, found excuses in the evening to keep my phone out of sight. Instead of owning up to what I had lost, I watched myself suffocate under the weight of my own relationship.

It had not always been like this. I remembered our trip to Disneyland, the time he watched Indiana Jones over the phone with me because I had come down with the flu, our first kiss after my only hole in one at the mini golf course. He had been Joshua, my Joshua, who scrawled his sonnets on my palms, who slow danced to fast songs. I collected this amalgamation of moments, the notes passed in rhetoric class, the poetry we shared with one another, the watch he let me keep as a symbol of his affection, cherished them until they felt threadbare against the weight of the infidelity that had taken away his touch.

I wondered too much about his relationship with Ally, watched her as she glided through every one of my classes, swung her hips and flicked her hair from her shoulder. Never attentive to the lesson, but always drawing the attention of men, this woman I had known for six years and never talked to suddenly meant more to me than my dearest friends. She lived in her body, I lived in my mind, yet Joshua had wanted us both. One night, overwhelmed by every question, every nightmarish assumption I held about the duration and intensity of their relationship as it unfolded simultaneously to ours, I begged him to tell me what had happened. Nothing could be worse than what my imagination can create I repeat over and over again again again. The full weight of his response slammed a door in our relationship somewhere, forever unraveling us from one another. We don’t talk about that.

The next day, I touched him. I took his hand in mine, pressed his watch into his palm.

III.

My gynecologist walked in to the room, prim and proper, one heel in front of the other. I wondered if she earned that walk from walking the tight rope in her personal life, or if it was only at work that she lived life as a balancing act. After various blood tests, ultrasounds, and x rays, she holds in her hands my results and my heart, juggling cruelty and kindness, waiting for the fall.

When she tells me that I will never have children, the high wire breaks, and my heart shatters, surprising me with the intensity of pain that ricochets through my body. PCOS. Polycystic ovary syndrome. A diagnosis condemning me to a life of popping birth control pills and shooting up fertility drugs. I have never wanted children, yet I feel that something has been ripped from me unfairly, like I have been stripped of one of my rights in womanhood.

When I ask her what my options are, if there is anything I can do to change my fate, she stares at me without remorse, hardened by too many young women just like me and I try to listen as she tells me she would have to direct me to a fertility clinic. There is no safety net in this balancing act. I don’t know what your options are, she explains. Here, we don’t talk about that.

I call the pharmacy that night, fill my first birth control prescription, call "game over" in places I thought my heart had forgotten how to ache.

IV.

I was fascinated by Emily's mouth. My roommate introduced me to a smile, I bonded with a grin, built deep friendship with a laugh. There was certainly something to be said for her hands strong and small, the curve of her back like the smooth side of a violin, the way her hair fell in her eyes, the feeling of her torso pressed against my back in sleep her heartbeat dancing on where my ribcage fuses with my spine—but before all of those had been her mouth.

Sitting on my bed with her, knee to knee and heart to heart, I had poured out the contents of my “compliment jar” filled nearly to the brim with anonymous notes from high school friends on our senior retreat, mixed with love letters and doodles concocted during lectures. She left a blue post it note in that jar the night she told me that she loved me, but I would not believe her until promises of a longing, held secret and afraid, spilled from her lips. When I kissed her, I could still taste the words on her mouth.

I want kids, she told me once over sushi, casually, like our future had been forged into inevitability after six clandestine months together. And a home in the Carolinas with a porch swing and a practice room and a giant kitchen with lemon colored walls and cream curtains. I watched my future take form in her mouth, ache for it. My voice must have become lost somewhere in the yearning, and too loudly, too boldly, I said: I just want to be with you. Her eyes widen, the mouth that I adore became something twisted, distorted by the secrets that hide in the crevices of her teeth and under her tongue. Hush, she whispers urgently, we don’t talk about that.

I tilt my head and raise an eyebrow. About what?