3 a.m. Migraine. I can’t wait to see what Facebook tries to sell me in this compromised, throbbing, barely awake state. Also: asthma, brought to you by weeks of wildfire smoke. At least I’ll survive it, unlike some of our wildlife and some of our trees and whatever else suffocates, which is both an act (dying) and an acting upon (causing to die). Maybe this is why Facebook shows me jiggly boobs. Maybe it’s tyring to help me out of what suffocates and what is suffocated, out of my own sentences, out of Midnight Dana and her (is her pronoun her, I wonder for real) pounding worldview.

Me: Midnight Dana, what are your pronouns?

Midnight Dana: I only know fear and pain. What is this place, this world a pox, a terror? Leave me here in the dark with the things that hide under the bed. Monsters got nothing on humans, on family. Where’s my mommy?

Me: So, like she or they or …

Midnight Dana: My pronoun is her. I am of her. I am hers. Where is she? You look like her, but you’re not her. I want Smurfs. I want a bird who sings to me. I want something shiny to carry in my left hand, something only I know I have. I want her, but she’s not mine.

Me: OK. Midnight Dana. Let’s see how Facebook markets to that. I mean to you. Let’s try to find you an inhaler. I’m going with she/her for your pronouns.

Midnight Dana: I die and cause to die.

Me: Where did you hear that?

Midnight Dana: From you, just now.

Me: That’s not what I said.

Midnight Dana: That’s what I heard.