These are not my hands. I control them as if they were, but they belong to something else. If I run them across the whiskered walls, it tickles but in an abstract way, like prodding a leg that has fallen asleep. I’ve cut myself so honey and rice seep from the wound; when mixed with the whiskers it makes a stain of black under the blue, blue light.

I was another creature once, but now that’s far away. In times like these, the first response is to test communication.

—Hello?

I think there won’t be a reply, but I wait for one anyway and it comes after clocks have long stopped working.

—Do not greet me as an equal.

What a funny thing to say, now if only I could remember how to laugh.

Here I say, —Lift up yourself and show me a face or speak a name.

—Commands? There is cruelty in the sardonicism.

—Please?

My body is meat, and I understand at once the humor in my request. Speech is for the time-locked and a face cannot be shown from the inside out.

—Oh, I say —These aren’t grains of rice and this isn’t honey.

Laughter.