In this city, buildings shifted into grandmothers. One day, it was your sublet with a kerosene hob, a prayer away from setting the whole colony on fire. Now, it’s her. This rivermud smell, her wedding anklet girdling your neck in an electrum vise, the crest of her nose beaking through the stairs, the walls now armored with her toenails, a jaundice-hued plasma furrowing canals through your bed, through the kitchen. Is that her pet gecko on the stove, you wonder. It darts up your arm and into the basin of your mouth, chirp-chirping her name, then yours.