25ii.

Occasionally she would take the feeling out from her chest.

Like lilies. Cold and sweet and warm and real -
Subtle in her palm.

She holds them out and they flutter, like doves. Cooing softly. They take flight and she lets them, flying deeper into a soft blue sky, flying where she cannot feel them, into a womb of warmth and darkness and -

Love.

Numbed, and so hard to touch.

25i.

She always believed they'd last forever.


Quietly, in the warmth right before her heart, where it bloomed like flowers.

Fragile; so sweet and so soon.

24.

She likes to fill pails with water and carry them out to the night sky.

In the darkness she could pretend she had caught a star, shining and shivering within red plastic.

23ii.

She loses track of the days.

Another afternoon slipped by, another sunbeam lost in her eyes, the shadow between her brows.

23i.

One finger trailing glossy black.

Down, mondaymornings and thursdayafternoons smudging softly.

22.

Oh, blue.

Pen cap between lips, eyes butterfly halfopen in late afternoon light.

A drop of ink, a solitary flower blooming heartache in the midst of placid white.

21.

And she jerks awake, heart thumping and eyes filling with her delicate dreams.

Crumble, flickering down her pale cheeks in translucent shadows.

20.

She reads their old emails and she cries.

Not because she misses them, but because she just doesn't hurt anymore.

19iii.

But pianos are so expensive.

Ivory, warmed palepale pink where her fingers kissed the keys.

19ii.

Whiterose finger, she brushes the black, the cold cold ebony.

19i.

She trailed incomplete symphonies in the soft white light.

Lyricless song, hanging in the still air like the unfinished portrait of a lover.