swollen. She holds herself. A local paper wrote a review of her community production of Hamlet. The journalist calls the staging “experimental and compelling” and the acting “subpar.” Jenny is called “a blue among black” and tries to figure out if she’s been complimented or killed. She skims an article in Opinions titled Women Should Not Be Allowed to Have Bodies and really almost agrees. She drinks two cups of spearmint tea and brews a third; it lavishes on a windowsill, goes cold. She sits down and writes a haiku without meaning to:

Like anger and geese
Blue things, like my blue body
I am not done yet

She writes another haiku, on purpose:

The world ended when
We noticed blue was missing
Nothing else was blue

She writes three full lines of just her name:

Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny

Tries to find herself in the lineup. Fails miserably. Screams out loud. Tries to get angry. Gives up, calls the stage manager, and asks, Did you see the review?

Not a single line about lighting.

Travesty. It’s treasonous.

She must be a lonely woman. A lonely, poorly lit woman.

Jenny holds the receiver between her shoulder and ear and just breathes.

There’s something else, he intuits.

I saw a sign, honey. A big blue sign. It was pointing right at me.