She painted the words herself. All of them. Took her three weeks and colors she bought one at a time from the dollar store on Sunset.

∙

Her dwelling faced the fountain. Mornings the sun came low across the water and the spray broke the light into something almost liturgical. She watched it through the windshield with her coffee going cold.

The cones she’d arranged herself — a small orange jurisdiction. A way of saying here ends the world you own.

∙

People read the back of her trailer like a menu. Blessed. Serene. At Ease. A woman in Lululemon stopped once, took a photo, posted it without asking. Said something about resilience. She watched from behind the curtain she’d sewn from a shower liner and a bedsheet and she didn’t move and she didn’t make a sound.

∙

She wasn’t serene. She was cataloguing. Every word a thing she meant to feel again someday. A list she kept on the outside so she wouldn’t lose it.

∙

Her name had been spoken by her mother once with real tenderness. She held that. The way you hold a coin that isn’t currency anywhere anymore but still has weight. Still bears the impression of something.

∙

Jubilant, she’d written near the bottom. Purple. Her smallest letters.

She hadn’t gotten there yet.

But she’d left room.