Troll

My boyfriend and I wander our neighborhood until we happen upon a troll under a bridge. There’s a sign that says if you stand on the orange star, recite a chant, and ask the troll for something while spinning to the right, he’ll grant it. We hold hands, stand on the star, and ask for a family. We turn to the right.

We have families of course, parents and siblings we see often, on my side a chaotic crew of nephews, a tenacious niece. We’re aware of our blessings, our outrageous privilege. But that is not what we mean, turning away from that inanimate mound of frowning concrete, coming back around, silly with hope.

Our wish is not granted. His sperm is sterile from chemo and I’m getting older, but that’s not why. Within the month, we break up; it is and isn’t sudden. Probably good we don’t have a baby, though most days I still want one. I scroll, see the blackout, the crushed children, the unfathomable flames, and think: despite.

Franny says she stopped feeling exceptional while living in Thailand. I am selling my house, the one on the beach that makes me feel exceptional. I bought it with my parents’ help but no one knows that so I sit alone and watch the seals and fancy myself successful, even after I quit my job and run out of money.

Chidinma calls from Canada. We’ve only spoken through screens but for years we made films together that never aired. Of course you feel this way, she says. In Nigeria, as a child, she used to watch films from everywhere: Bollywood, Kung Fu, Nouvelle Vague. In the States we watched films about ourselves.

We discuss our dead films, mourn the government. I’m annoyed by everyone’s hypocrisy, I tell her, most of all my own. A colleague walks in and I exaggerate my tone. I scroll past an ad for a concert. A child struck with shrapnel. An old friend’s new baby. A beach vacation. A girl slicing bath bombs with a knife.

They update the maps and the earth is unrecognizable. In the documentary, children sing in a tent. I stop reposting the photos. Mothers who wanted a baby like I want a baby. And now the children are trapped under rubble, the children are limbless, the children are starving, the children, the children, the childr—

At the baby shower, Grace cries by the fruit bowl. Her younger brother is going to be a father. She’s happy of course, but she thought it’d be her. I understand. My younger sister is pregnant with her third. Should we have another, we’re not sure, we’re still deciding, she said for years. Do it, I said. Despite.

My friends have all frozen their eggs. I’m trying but my blood somehow runs without iron. Did you take your iron pill today? my ex texts. We still live together. He is kind. For now we cook meals, play games, go to sleep in separate rooms. We both love my niece and nephews and the optimism of the produce aisle.

The real estate agent texts to say she missed some fine print in the contract and now my furniture belongs to the buyer. My peacock-colored couch I saved up for for months. The dresser my mom rescued from the dead guy and refurbished in my childhood garage. The kayaks, the rugs, the little mirror I used to talk to.

I scroll past an ad for swimsuits. An ad for ballet flats. An ad for rugs. The children, the children, the children, the children, the children. Someone comments “but what about” and I close the tab, open a new one, look up Nouvelle Vague. My nephew smashes two rocks together and they spark; I swear they spark.

I wonder how my neighborhood troll came to share a name with internet agitators. Internet AI claims the verb is named after a fishing technique. That makes sense but I still think of folktales, of neon hair. I went trolling once, on a tall ship on another coast, the year my friend froze in the river. No wait: trawling.

I miss him in the spring, when metaphors shed their subtlety. The river didn’t mean it but that doesn’t matter. Every person is a spark, a fire, a sun. How can we hold it— how can we mean it— how can any human mean it, a child silhouetted in flame? How can anyone do anything anymore without screaming?

Tracy sends an old interview with a poet. He says it’s not about being remembered; it’s about being a link in the chain of whatever we care about, so it doesn’t disappear. No one will remember us anyway, even if we’re exceptional for a time. I remember this but forget the poet’s name. My teeth feel loose at the roots.

So much is gone and I don’t have a baby and I am not exceptional. I take my grief on a walk. Common grief in my small heart on a short walk. A real butterfly lands on a real rhododendron. I wander beneath the bridge. The troll is where it always is and children are picking its nose. I stand on the orange star and spin.