In the small hours of the morning, my bones are broken until I can be wedged down the throat of a canary, until I can’t be sure if I am the thing singing or choking the thing singing, but I can hear the words, can feel them shudder, and they stick with me, and every night I don’t die, and every morning I get a little older, and then, adhesion by adhesion, I am a part of this body, alternate and host, suffocating and suffocated, and I am alive, alive and surviving the mine, alive and surviving the monster she brought into our home, alive and hearing the songs of other canaries shunted through the hallways, alive and yearning for sunshine and a world where I’m not a harbinger, alive and desperately hoping with borrowed time and the heart of some other little girl.