“What happens in this family is not what
happens in the real world,” the stern voice said,
echoing from the cellphone I heard while walking
along the gravel-patched road.
The young woman who held the phone
staggered aimlessly down suburban backstreets
in her pajamas – she’d wandered from her doorstep
in a fever dream, unable to grasp her family’s rules
and lost in a web of intrigue, watching it unfold
like a nightmare with its own demented logic.
