Pushed away: Shrimp (I)

It tracks the state of every attachment continuously, reading small changes in warmth as advance notice of being put out, and works hard in the background to stay acceptable enough to keep. Rejection that began before birth cast it as the one the family could manage without, and a person already ejected once treats belonging as a tenancy rather than as a fact. What it asks for is to stop paying rent in one relationship and find out whether the arrangement holds anyway.

I keep an eye on how much people like me the way other people watch the weather.

It echoes Zal, born white-haired and read as an ill omen, left on the mountain by his own father and raised by a bird, who spent the rest of his life proving his worth to the house that had put him out. The form implies a task: to notice which house the proving is still addressed to.