Her lips are the roads of her childhood,
rough and unpaved, split by the pressure of those who use them
and use them again. Her hands are not soft but calloused and clam
up, and when I try to hold them they slip out of my touch. These
are the words that leave her dry, the whispered confessions from
teeth and tongue and the smile that wavers and never meets her
eye. This is the home that was broken before it had even begun.
Here are the halls and here are the walls, the vines of creeping
conversation, the whispered words and the two a.m. shouts, the
daughter whose illness is sure to kill them all. And here is the
bed that she does not sleep in, but loses herself to
unconsciousness every once in a while. Here are the sheets and
here is the pillow, here are her secrets, the sharp and the
vile.