I have been touched by magic hands. In the womb I was prodded and examined by the man who raised a literary genius, and only because my head distended to contain this euphony of words did he not catch me in my first moment of Vancouver. Perhaps it would have been too much, the constriction on my head and the twisting torture of the birth canal, followed by an explosion into those magic hands. No, the work was done in utero, and it was enough.

What comes next is so Vancouver it makes me ache with lust, because it is the city pushing me down and running its skytrains down my neck, rowing its dragonboats through my hair. What comes next is a Blackcomb of boxes and a flurry of styrofoam peanuts.

The house is beneath where the crows gather. They fly there every evening in an elastic flock, to the gathering place, where we too will gather. Before us, the house held plants, a jungle of resinous whispering narcotic, green before I ever arrived. It'll be ours in seven days, our growhouse heaven.