for Rich Kate and I found the shoebox stuffed behind the sweaters on our stepdad’s top shelf. We stared at the women’s parted mouths, hair wild as brushfire, many of them kneeling the way a parent does to tend a wound. We laughed as we looked, and they looked back: eyes blue as the marbles we begged him to buy us at the market. How carefully he counted the last ones in his tattered wallet. We licked our fingers clean of churro sugar as he handed us the drawstring bag. I still can’t get over how he stayed no matter what we did: drew thick Sharpie dicks into the mouths of the glossy women, left the marbles unopened in the back of his car for weeks. Once, I caught him hanging the panties mom washed for me; his fingers on the part that hugged my hip, so careful not to touch the crotch as he laid them on the drying rack. Never in my life have I been not touched like that.