I saw her. Backbone parallel to the wall and shoulders straight. Hands on bare knees, her profile illuminated against the dark shadows of the wall.

So I sat next to her, listened to her breathe as she listened to the sound of raindrops hitting the windowpane. The drug had come on suddenly, like it always does. One minute you’re smiling, the next minute it’s not you who is smiling. Your lips, pink and soft, strange and full of life, are being pulled lengthwise by the muscles hiding beneath the skin of your face, and you’re laughing and you can’t stop.

We discovered hieroglyphics in the stone of the steps that led us one by one to our front door. “How many steps of stone in the world, how many hidden secrets!” we screamed to the sky.

The heat of the house wrapped us in it, our clothes dropped to the ground like apples in autumn. We stretched our bones to the sky and blew our noses and laughed because we were blowing our noses. Now Emily bent over her notebook in the living room. Surrounded by candles, pouring herself out of her pen.

I sat at Dian’s feet as she listened to the sound of raindrops hitting the windowpane.

After a while she said, “My grandfather…he’s getting so old.” Eyes still staring at the darkness outside. Smiling, then wincing, a sucking of air between the teeth in an effort of distraction from pain. I wondered who he was: an ancient soul, living all alone in his beautiful little house in Athens. Feeding his cats in the morning sunshine, his chickens clucking in the yard, and his goats pacing. At the beach, heavy eyes staring out at the incomprehensible sea, shuffling about the beaches of Alagadi in white pants, with skin the color of copper. And here his granddaughter sits with me in America, in a kitchen with tall ceilings and plastic on the windows to keep out the chill. There is no sand here, only tile. Her back is straight and the moonlight shines on her winter-pale body.

When I met her she was sitting in a dirty punk house filled with mix tapes and old 40s. She sat on a velour couch, second-hand. Lime green. She liked my shoes, I liked the way she looked into my eyes when she spoke to me. She was deep, I could feel it. She stretched out for miles and miles and held secrets below her calm surface.

“How did you get here?” I asked her. I was nervous to hear the answer, but I wasn’t sure why. The walls started to breathe, my fingers twitched in anticipation.

When she turned her face to mine, her pupils looked like big black marbles. “In a glass bottle.”

I slept on the living room floor that night. My mattress was too soft, it sucked me in like quicksand. But the carpet was safe, it didn’t move. I could depend on it.

In the next room I heard the soft sounds of their lovemaking. Their hungry kisses, Dian’s gasps as her body turned into an ocean and the waves broke upon the shore.