Any guest will do, forget those ridiculous lists. You can teach them your language (still in process): your car named Chair, your chair named Table, your imaginary friend  (you lean on him) Enemy. His ex-lover, you first called Nemesis, then switched to #Argentina. Had children disappeared there, or was that Peru?  Now people vanish every hour, but no one ever sees anyone (it’s against some law) and cats materialize to take their place.  You will alert the party-goers once you invent an excuse in the future that has no name you can think of, not yet.

Carla Sarett’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in Prole, Defenestration, Third Wednesday, One Art and elsewhere; her essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays.  A Closet Feminist, her debut novel, will be published in 2022 (Unsolicited Press.). Carla lives in San Francisco.