I tell her amidst our constitutional in Plastic Garden.

She lowers herself onto the grass, studying its frozen, wind-blown artifice, then plants her hand into a spongy anthill.

As the mechanical carbuncles stream up her pale skin, bites evoking winces, she whispers to them, “Like me, like me, like me.”

Tim Boiteau lives and writes near Detroit with wife and son. Find him at @timboiteau.