My father is dead. The dashing young man is famous somewhere else. I don't know where. I don't keep up with him. He left me because we were young and confused, and because we knew — both of us knew — that what I wanted wasn't him and what he wanted wasn't me, and leaving me on an island was better than trapping me in a new palace labyrinth in some rich house in Athens. He was doing me a favor. Really, we both had just wanted away from where we were, and running away together had been the natural way to do it at the time. I moved on long ago. I wouldn't even call him my great love. I wouldn't even call him my pretty great love. Honestly, we never even made love. I've never been with a man. You are probably about to be my great love. Look at you, you. You're adorable. I mean it. You're as delicious as hot chocolate in winter. You're a goddess to me. I bought the box in my favorite curio shop, and the owner, whom I was supposed to call Hecate, told me it was a Living Box and all it did was sit there, waiting. It had a fleshy, squishy look to it — all pink and a little fuzzy like a square peach. It felt like a sausage patty with a heartbeat in my palm. I felt its tiny heartbeat. I watched the spidery blue veins beneath its skin pumping blood. I filled this lonely box with small things. Here is a large, brass button I stole from a former lover's jacket, imprinted with a cheerful anchor that always made me melancholy. Minnie lost it in my car, and I had lied to her for weeks before the end came, saying I had looked for it beneath the passenger seat. I never looked until I was looking for a piece of her because she wouldn't return my calls. Did I ever tell you about Minerva? I will. I promise. And soon.

There was a fossil seashell collected from the side of the Anthropology building where I had spent days tugging loose my prize from the limestone wall beside my desk. I've kept that with me for years. I have no idea where my diploma went, but I kept the seashell.

I haven't been to the ocean since I was a child. We should go, you and I. We should go before we forget what we remember.

Finally, a snow globe from childhood assured me that Rock City was awash in holiday cheer and small bits of flowing white plastic. No matter where I put my living box, when the lid was closed my box looked lonely. I gave up trying to put my box somewhere happy. I placed it on a high shelf between a ship-in-a-bottle that my father had given me and a picture of myself from when I was young. This, too, just made me sad. My father has been dead for years, and the smiling girl's face on my canvas has new marks. I will never have a father again. I will never be so beautiful again. Minnie was never superstitious. She was my last serious girlfriend. She was a mechanical engineer. She folded her clothes and ironed them, and even used a little deodorant-stick-like thingy to take out tea stains in white blouses. I couldn't imagine a life more complex than pulling the clothes straight from the dryer—hot, hot, hot—and throwing them on slightly damp, then running to work at my computer in the bedroom. I never knew what to do about stains. Sometimes, in the night, I resorted to emergency club soda and it either worked or it didn't. I miss her. Of course I do. I miss all my lost lovers—even that boy. I'll miss you when you leave me for a younger girl with bright eyes. I'll be so jealous I'll dream of pouring acid on her face in her sleep, or poisoning her with black magic from Jennifer's Curio Shop. Magical omens and mystic portents: the thunder was terrible that day, but it hadn't rained at all. The boiling clouds tumbled all over each other, mustering up the courage to fight the ground. Styrofoam packing and dead leaves and papers danced in a windy bacchanal. Minnie and I were riding bicycles on a Sunday morning to a café, trying to beat the weather because we thought it would rain any second. When we got to the café, we sat in the window. We sipped lattes and read the gigantic newspaper that spilled all over our little table like a cat on a toy piano. We took off immediately. We raced up a hill, and I won, and she shouted at me to turn the corner on 14th. I asked her which direction, but she couldn't hear me shouting, and I couldn't hear her at all anymore with all that wind. I turned left and rode as far ahead as I could. I had guessed correctly. I rode as fast as I could over bumps and rough blacktop. Dense city buildings ended at a railroad bridge, with brown grass taller than trees growing where a sidewalk should have been. The grasses bowed like supplicants to the wind. Minnie called from behind me. I turned my head long enough to see that she had stopped at one of the little businesses there. She was waving at me and shouting. I skidded to a halt and turned my tires back toward her. Minerva's gift to me was a palm reading. I would have preferred Tarot cards, because they look so beautiful and you never know which one will flip over to look back at you. Palms never change. They get older and older, but the lifeline never shrinks like you think it should. See, Minnie was the one who took me there. She never thought it would be dangerous because she wasn't reckless like me.