After old lady Rhonda threw my birthday party at Damascus, she sent me home with the leftover pieces of cake. I was happy and stripped naked, climbed down onto my mattress and ate a slice in bed. Fell asleep with the lights on and the cake box next to me on the floor, where I used to keep Madeline.

I woke up a few hours later and looked over. There were ants all over the cake. Writhing. Picking up crumbs. They had two lines moving in opposite directions, like a freeway, ants going toward the prize and those walking back toward the kitchen with what they’d salvaged.

Me, Rhonda, I just stared at them.

And then the ants weren’t just moving on their highway. No. They broke their direct paths, moving in new directions, odd ways. Like a marching band, they split into creating seven independent patterns.

They formed letters.

Spelling a word.

Spelling my name.

I saw it. My real name. Spelled out before my eyes. When was the last time I even thought about that name? When was the last time I remembered that Rhonda, Big Boy, Crash Man weren’t who I really am?

It lay on the floor in front of me. The letters looked wrong. Jammed together. Cluttered. Too many consonants. The syllables colliding in an ugly way. I don’t think I can tell you what it is after all. I’d rather leave it snarled in all those days, months, years that are so far gone they barely happened; or maybe I’d rather leave it snarled in all those days, months, years that are so close it’s like they’re still happening. Either way, you’ll never know, and I hope you can forgive me.

The ants broke their configuration. I hoped they’d spell another word or instructions for what I was supposed to do now. But they went back to their task, reforming their chain-gang and trudging toward the kitchen with their trophies.

I took my bent arm and dipped it in some of the cake’s frosting and eased it into the ants’ flow of traffic. Nice and slow. Making sure not to hurt anyone. They broke their line, some scurrying away from me, afraid, but lots of them smelled what was smeared on my arm and marched up its mangled path in the hopes of finding something to take with them. One ant stole a clump of cake that had caught in my arm hair, but the rest of them couldn’t find much, bursting away from one another, disappointed. They turned around, walking down my forearm, wrist, hand, fingers. They were all disappearing.

I trailed one of the ants as it walked off of me and onto the floor. I picked that one single ant from their writhing freeway, their chaos. I picked that one because even though it looked like all the rest, it wasn’t. It was alive and that life had a story.

Delicately, I pinched the ant between my thumb and forefinger and lifted it off the ground. Its legs went crazy, pedaling in midair. I set it on my face and let it walk all over me.