I know you said not to tell you, but you should know it didn’t die, but it did disappear, which is worse. They start their fires with plastic bottles filled with gas, throw the whole thing in: the smell of burning carpet like when a place someone lives is burning, photographs filling with black water before curling at the edges like hats.

The men bragged about the beers they’ve drunk, mentioned mouthfeel and teeth, kept going on about teeth. One of them touched the table with his fingertips as he talked, used his palm and a sliding motion once to show something that was here, but that should be here, or the desire to push a pile of someone from one place to another. Something needing moved, and the tone was serious. He motioned crushing the thing in question with his fist, then tossing it behind his back.

I know, but you should know how delicately the napkins were unfolded, revealing two heavy forks and a butterknife, and how a girl in the next room was recalling her first friend to die, or mostly the summer it happened, or mostly how she’d known many suicides but in this story they didn’t seem to count.

I know you know, but it seems useful to think of it as it is to a bird: sometimes the sky turns into a window, sometimes behind the glass is glass. You should know the tortoises were large and breathed like men. Sometimes you twitch in the grass while school children watch, and you can see them dig a hole with their hands.

It’s unfair to spare you: they tossed the fish heads to the sea lions, who caught them in their mouths like dogs. They hosed the blood off the deck and into the water. Sometimes they pissed off the dock, making arcs against the sky and the clouds hanging low to the horizon.