She cries all night, the child, disrupting the silence of my apartment. I bury my head in the comforter as if I might find sleep there, but sleep will not have me when the child is crying. I slide headphones over my ears, turn the music loud as it will go, yet I can still hear her, feel the sadness coming off her like heat. Some nights I drink, gin and tonic to drown the noise, and that works for a bit. Some nights I soothe her with a plate of cookies, a slice of chocolate cake, a bowl of buttered popcorn. She can’t cry if her mouth is busy chewing.

She is quieter during the day, mostly, when I’m working at my computer, amusing herself in the corner with the dollhouse my grandmother gave me. Sometimes I look up and catch her sniffling, and I sigh because it’s time to fetch a new box of Kleenex. Sometimes she pulls out my old box of Legos and leaves them strewn around the living room, half-built ruins of castles and block-shaped people, the tiniest pieces embedded in the carpet for my bare feet to find.

She knows I hate her. It doesn’t matter if I pretend to be her friend, try to play games with her, games of tag, follow the leader, Simon Says. She plays along, tears running down her face. (Except hide and seek, because I never bother to look for her.) Sometimes I lose patience and snap, Shut the fuck up. You didn’t say Simon Says, she says through snot and tears.

She needs. She needs and needs and cries and needs. I have nothing for her. Why? I yell, when what I really want to do is slap her. Why won’t you stop? What do you want from me? I don’t knooooooow, she wails. (She has all the reason of a puppy. Eat, sleep, shit, cry.)

I go out at night to get away from her. I go out and pretend I am normal, that she does not exist. Sometimes people are fooled, and then I can laugh her away, dance her away. Mostly though they look at me and know, as if she’s branded on my face.

Sometimes I am standing at the counter slicing an apple, and I look at the knife. I look at it and wonder if it’s sharp enough, if I could cut her out of me. Maybe if I start on my arm, the fleshy part below the shoulder, I can bleed her out of me. I imagine the sting of the blade digging into my skin and think it might be enough to shut her up for a while. I look at the red-hot stove element beneath the tea kettle. If I touch it, maybe it would burn her out, melt her away like wax.

I cry for her. When she’s not looking, when she’s locked away, her sadness leaking through the cracks. I think about all the people who turn from the sight of her, people like me. I cry for her, and I am ashamed.

In the mirror I see her face, and I want to shatter it into pieces. Little pieces that don’t fit together right. Maybe in smaller pieces I could accept her. Maybe in smaller pieces I could show her to someone else, and they would not turn away, and through them I could even come to like her a little.