wasn’t always a Brad Pitt duplicate, but now he is. Not the handsome kind of Brad Pitt. More like Brad Pitt in that Benjamin Button movie. He didn’t even start old like in the movie. He started normal, then he grew up, and he kept growing. But then he stopped. Nobody noticed at first except he knew, and he told me right after we met, but I didn’t believe him, because these things don’t happen if you’re not Brad Pitt, these things only happen in movies.

“I grow too,” he said, “but I grow younger,” and I laughed, and I thought he’d laugh too, but he didn’t. He claimed he stopped growing old after his mom left. His parents thought he was old enough to handle the divorce and take care of himself, only he wasn’t. He said, “I need a new mother,” and I nodded, because he obviously needed support and therapy, he didn’t know how to survive alone, although I still thought he spoke in metaphors and that I’d be the one to decipher the code.

He told me he’d auditioned aspiring mothers, and some appeared, but then they left. “Nobody wants a freak,” he said, and I held him and caressed his hair, and he felt safe in my arms, I said, “You just need love,” but then he asked me to make him an omelet and I pushed him away and reminded him that I’m not his mom and he frowned, he said, “You almost got the part,” then wept like a child, and by the time I turned around he was a child.

I get it now, I see he’s serious. I call his mom to come and get him, but she hangs up, she says, “I raised him once, won’t do it again.” He’s now getting younger by the minute, the stronger the need the faster he grows in reverse, and I’m stuck with a toddler who cries hard, but there isn’t a mother figure in all stories and some stories are lonely and sad and motherless, I tell my ex-boyfriend before I leave, but baby Brad Pitt rises, heads to the kitchen, he grows back to his age like he’s now a Brad Pitt pendulum, he holds a couple eggs in his hands, stares like asking, “How ya like me now,” and says, “bet you want them hard-boiled.”