Once she knew a boy who collected spare keys and strung them on a cable.

He never tried to unlock anything–as far as she knew. But he liked the weight

of them. Hundreds. He could hardly lift them. He liked their different shapes.

She liked that each key carried a secret story. She does not, however, like junk

drawers, stuffed with bent paper clips, leaky batteries, dried pens, plastic forks,

yellowed recipes. Rotting rubber bands. A single, gummy key. She wants every

thing in its place. Everything found and clean. Once, she had a rabbit–big, white,

bossy, with pink eyes–who lined up her wooden toys, parallel and evenly spaced.

Now, near her house, people live in tents along the creek. Some sweep their dirt

stoops. Most have shopping carts full of damp newspapers, broken toys, blenders

with no cords, take-out containers, art in cracked frames. They adopt stray dogs.

Her mother was a stray, with no family, forever moving to a new cities, hauling

her heavy purse, but leaving the rest behind. Friends. Furniture. Photographs.

Keys. It frightened her how easily her mother forgot the past. She traveled light,

but her brain was a storage unit of stories and pain. The girl kept scrapbooks,

proof that she had once belonged to a time and place. Proof she owned a story.

Now, she has lived a long time in one place. She tries to keep her life spare. She

no longer keeps scrapbooks. She uses an electronic key. She fears she no longer

has a story. She tries to keep her life spare, but she’s still a tourist of excess:

She likes seeing intricate cathedrals, graffitied walls, elaborate back tattoos.

Her dreams are complicated. She is running late. She has lost her bags. Her keys.

She can’t find her way through the corridors of city streets. Airports. Shopping

Malls. Hotels. High schools. She is driving too fast. Her steering wheel is loose.

People’s faces are always changing. She wishes she were a rabbit with toys tidy

and parallel. But now the knots and networks of her body no longer know how

to speak to each other. They have lost the keys to each other’s houses. They have

forgotten their shared story. But this is the body she has. She doesn’t have a spare.