“Do you see that branch?”

“Which one?”

“The one that looks sort of like this,” she makes a little claw with her right hand, two fingers clasped down and the other two and thumb fanned and twisted. I roll my head around, so that the back of my ear just about touches the grass, to see. I try to make the same shape with my own hand, and look back up to try to match my own fingers with the trees. I don’t see the branch.

“I think so. Yes I see it.” I don’t.

“At the end of that branch. On the thumb. Shaped like a sort of pear cut in half. That one’s my favourite.”

“Really great choice,” I say, “really fantastic leaf.” I still don’t see it. But I think it’s my favourite nonetheless.

Seven fifteen the bread truck comes.

“Would you like some bread?” ask the breader.

“No thank you, not today,” I say. I don’t need any bread today. I’m going away for a while. “I’m going away for a while,” I say.

The bread truck coughs and growls and comes to a stop. Miss Helen is ready next door with her six pounds and she is holding it out ready, but the breaders do not notice her, and they stop a little short, and she’s left waiting, with her arm held out lame, and an empty linen bag dangling by her the handles of her chair. The breaders have stopped just short of Miss Helen’s drive, and have got out, and are coming this way. Miss Helen is staring.

“Good morning, Miss Helen!” I say, cheerfully. I am not cheerful, really.

“You’re going away for a while?” asks one of the breaders.

“Yes. A while. Away.”

“Won’t you need any bread?”

“No thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Not even sandwiches?”

“No, thank you.”

“Okay.”

Seven sixteen the bread truck leaves.

I’m going away for a while.

Blue eyed frog over there. I see it with my own green eyes. I wade through its gaze like an ibis across dense mud. Watching me, little frog. Why are you staring. Is it me? With my green eyes?

A pair of dragonflies out shopping. They whizz past my tired wet ears. zzzZZZZzzzz. That’s what they say. With their wings. Each clutching three or more designer paper bags with little strings for handles. They were talking about the government.

Stop getting distracted. Blue eyed frog. I look for it with my own, green, eyes. I shuffle them across the dry tree moss and hop between a branch and a leaf. Where are you little blue eyed frog. I can’t find you.

It’s winter but it’s not cold. I miss that frog.

A little white bug walks across your screen.

Sashays.

You open your mouth a half inch, you glance at your reflection in the black bezel of your laptop.

Your expensive laptop.

You can’t help your self, your lip, your bottom lip, you scrape it with your top two teeth, and you check your front left incisor with your warm tongue just to see, and you can’t help yourself, and you clear your throat twice, once not really at all and the second time only quietly, and you then, slightly nervous, but you don’t know why, you say

“Hey bug watch your feet, that’s some hot prose you’re wa- sashaying across.”

And the little white bug stops, and you’re not sure if it’s because she heard you and she understood or because she got a waft of your breath, your chicken breath, your chicken broth breath, and you held that breath in your lungs, lungs full of breathy chicken broth, and you waited for a response, and you thought you heard a “hell yeah boy”, but you weren’t sure because

bugs have quiet little voices. And you’ve been up for a while.

• Bullet points. My shoes are off. I locked the bike just in case. Who’s gonna take it?
• There’s a couple on a date. The man has a tattoo on his leg, it looks quite new. I can’t quite make it out. I think they are flowers. Or a robot. I think my contact lens prescription is wrong. He has curly hair and is in a reclining position. She has long black hair and is sitting up. Are they happy? Probably. She says, “I was gonna wear something convenient, but it’s so hot.” I wonder what about the clothes she is wearing is inconvenient. I don’t want to look for too long. At least I have CMD+A ⌫. I have a Mac now.
• There’s a birthday balloon in yonder distance. I ought really to get a new contact lens prescription. I can’t really see that much. Will I fail my driving test? Yes, but not for this.
• Two men, two beards, one throws down a red blanket.
• I glanced again at the couple. She is wearing a turqoise and red leopard print dress. Playsuit? Don’t know. Don’t linger. She’s lived in Richmond seven years. Puma? Jaguar?
• Woman reads a book on an iPad. Is it an article? Maybe. Is it this? No. Probably not. Not yet. Probably

Mother slid me a five pound note, uncreased, flat on the table. I didn’t move. Except my eyes. I moved those. In my head, to look at the note, and then to her, and then back at my book.

“Take it.”

I continued to read. I was learning about the Aztecs.

“Take it.”

I slid my eyeballs around in their sockets and pointed them toward her again. And then I gave in and put my book down, and rotated my body and planted my feet on the hardwood floor, and met with her properly.

“No thank you,” I said, taking the note. Quetzalocoatl would have been ashamed.

You fold the orange paper in two, and then in two again, along the same axis, so that when you let it unfurl it formed an “S” shape, slowly bouncing outwards like one of those fortune-telling fishes, the kind that have a good go at looking into your future but either find it too impenetrable or too depressing, and give up and go limp. You watch it dance and die for a moment, and then screw it up, along with the remains of the silver foil, get up out of your seat and shuffle over to the bin in the corner and toss it in. No one looks up, as far as you can tell. But they probably do. Furtively, quickly, Just because no one’s staring doesn’t mean no one’s looking. You make your way back to the hard plastic chair.

My parents met next to a vending machine. She’d been after a twix, but there were none. So she got stuck, thumbing the confections through the grubby window with her pupils, trying to decide what would be a worthy substitute. Who doesn’t sell a twix? She’d asked. Hm? said the man behind her. She hadn’t noticed that she’d been standing there for several minutes and a queue of one had formed. Are you talking to me? No, sorry, hi, hello. She was flustered. And she knew the only thing that would remedy it would be a twix. I have a twix, said Dad. I’ll share it with you if you like. Mum was suspicious. He held up his twix, two fingers, he said. What are you after? asked Mum. A cherry coke, said Dad. Such a good drink. He nodded. Such a good drink.

You unstick yourself from the sweaty leather of your office chair and hoist yourself up with the armrests and onto your feet. The chair rolls backward slightly as you do this, with a little scuttling sound, as if it were afraid of your display of strength. You swivel it round and position it safely back under the desk, wedged in so it can’t go anywhere. You glance quickly at the others, but they don’t look up. Maybe they’re already dead, you think. Silently, you slip away to the other side of the room, past six more rows of drones. A couple raise their eyes to you as they feel your breeze on their cheeks, but inevitably only linger on you for a second, and then look somewhere else, toward the ceiling, as if using your image as a stepping stone.

You  know, you can never go back home. It just doesn’t work. Not once you’ve really left. This was the last thing he’d said to you on the day before you went, as you both faded out of consciousness like the floor of a pond fades from solid to liquid. And then through the quiet hours of goo and dirt and shit, and floating weeds, you reached the morning border between water and air, and unlike the murky bottom, this was an instant transition from peace to wakefulness, as he dropped the tin coaster from the bedside table while bringing you your coffee. Sorry, he said. And on that last day, he knew that the battle was lost, and instead of trying to persuade you to stay he was just nice, and kind, and calm, and good. And then, really, you left.