It was there in the bathroom sink, my tears cupped in its porcelain palm. Bubbling up in the suds. There, drowning in the saturated cornfields. Flying like a wandering albatross through a bottle-green sky. I said my dead friend’s name and it turned to vapor inside my mouth. It was there in my fourth-grade journal, where I drew a green circle and wrote: everyone belongs inside. There, in the red dust when the rover circled and circled and found no evidence of life. I circled and circled, my pointer finger extended as if I were scrolling down a list of words in the dictionary, looking for the right one. Absence—no. Emptiness—no. Ghost—no. Grief—no. Not quite. I blew into an empty wine bottle so I could hear the ocean. I wanted to find my dead friend buried in the sand like an abalone shell. I circled and circled, holding a stick, lashing at the air like a piñata, expecting my sadness to spill all over the ground. And there it was: sweet jelly inside a strawberry candy. Hydrangeas like fat, purple storm clouds. There it was. The sky opened like a casket and out flew the birds, singing.