At such times it's hard to not feel betrayed or neglected, but luckily above the gloom of the backyard I see stars, like tiny white-hot petals crazing the evening. I concern myself with digging, digging deep into the soil where the possibilities seem grand and burgeoning. The treasures I've found are prominently displayed in our house: a slew of snails, the femur of a fox, a squirrel's skull, a magnetic keychain, and (my proudest discovery) a carapace of a rare tortoise from a desert two hundred miles away. He had traveled all the way from there just to die in our backyard. How these things got here, I have no idea, but the wonder of finding them under the soil never fails to fascinate and enrapture me. However, it gets a bit distracting when my roommate makes those scary lovemaking noises from inside the bedroom. I start to question her safety although I am too scared myself to reenter our house.

Later on into the night, my resentment is usually attenuated, replaced by a harrowing sense of loss, perhaps loneliness. I witness the man leaving the building and I feel a low snarl aching to escape me but I stop myself, usually. My roommate comes out calling for me and I would ignore her the first couple of times. Sometimes it's easy being invisible. I merely have to shut my eyes and sit very still, and she wouldn't see me, she wouldn't detect the wet glint in my sad and stupid eyes, she wouldn't find me sitting there beneath the orange tree her mother planted when she was just a baby and surely not old enough to copulate.

When I am certain she is asleep, I return to our room. Everything–the red oak dresser, her skirts strewn across the bed, the hanging tromp lo'eil prints–is the same except for the scent. The scent of the man (a mixture of deodorized alkalis and cannabis) is so strong that I want to throw up into the toilet bowl. Something spins a ball of saliva-yarn inside my throat. I slump to the floor in exhaustion, not even able to reach my bed. To my annoyance, she awakens, and she runs her hands across my face and says, "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." I notice that she's crying. I console her. I want to tell her it's okay, she doesn't want that stink mussing her good scent anyway. I put my head on her shoulder, and she sobs harder.

When despair is apparent, I can inhale and feel it as if it is another entity in the room. The tenor of her voice changes, her normally fluid movements reduced to a trembling gasp. I'm reminded of those small songbirds that remain behind after their flocks have migrated–shocked, still heaps inside their wintry nests. As the seconds unfold, I convulse suddenly. I can't bear it, the heartbreak of a creature so close to me. The smell overtakes everything. I grow dizzy and faint. She glances at me, on the floor, beside myself with anxiety, and she laughs, stops crying. I'd left the door open out in the kitchen and a rush of cold wind is invading our house, sweeping into the sad warm scents. She strokes her hands over my face and leaves me to close the door.