I’m calling Greer who is sick with a chest cold and I’m knitting a scarf for a boy I once loved. “What if I shat on the kitchen floor and looked you in your eyes in a spiteful way?” I ask her. “I would be scared, but I would still love you,” she responds. “Maybe I’d be scared by how much I still love you.” The cat sits on the kitchen table and traces the circular motion of the knitting needle with her eyes. I am reminded of a story my mother likes to tell of her childhood. She says Grandpa used to hypnotize the rooster by forcing it to the ground and holding it still. Starting at the tip of the rooster’s beak, Grandpa would draw a long line in the sand until the rooster went cross eyed, paralyzed by the sadness and stupidity of being a bird. Mother, five-years-old and rooster-height, could then collect chicken eggs without worrying about getting her eyes pecked out. I tell this to Greer, and as she coughs up the chunks that linger in her throat she tells me that I have to write about this someday. Someday I will, but now I sit and gaze at the yellow yarn. In the orange dining room light, the yarn looks like bile and sunshine and orange rind. It will be a scarf and it will be warm, I tell Greer. I will wrap it up in cellophane and a bow and I will give it to a boy I feel a gentle indifference towards.