I dream about you, you know.
     And in dreamland, time traveled backwards. You and I were walking backwards on Liszt Street, past Point X, past Mom shouting at her lawyer, past Rafael kissing Katherine, past all the restaurants and people-phantoms and buskers on street corners smelling of cigarettes and beer.
     We entered your office. You held your bonsai plant in your hands. Your fingers ran up and down its small trunk like you were massaging the back of a lover. I remember your voice in my ear: “Sometimes I can hear it grow.”
     You walked backwards onto your desk while I looked at my arms. They were covered in red X’s, like someone sliced them with a razor.
     “I’m a placebo effect,” you said.  You were on your desk. You held the bonsai plant high over your head. Then you let go, and it splattered like a body full of blood.
     “I’m a placebo effect,” you said again, while the blood formed an oblong shape in the carpet. An oblong with diamond-shaped ears and eyes like black seeds pounded into the dirt.
     I couldn’t make out the shape back then. But I know better now.