Stubborn atoms decide. To find us. Time relenting. As the explosion subsides. We are left with. Remnants. Broken chalk. With which to outline the dead. The beasts with full bellies. Our bones their toothpicks.

Go back he screamed. As I wonder what back could be. Beginning. Middle. End. It was anyone's guess. Back to where I thought. As I contemplated all the lives we'd left.

The quarter on her wrist. Playing heads or tails with if. The island in her head. Talking to the ocean in shouts. Just pretend she warns. That there's no one there. Ignore the pistons. As the motor peters out.

The promise of the vacuum works its ways into the grief. She pretends there are flowers. In the soil she has saved.

The dead things in her gown. Repeating. Evident fairy tales. The dead things. Like heavy rings on her fingers. Making it hard to explain. The numbness. The liars on their high towers. Pissing down on what was almost real.

The funeral. In ardent ripples. Pulls the clown from the ritual. Big feet won't save me now. I see her in her seldom dresses. Imagining the world as it should have been. No dead things. Just crayons. Filling in the thick outlines.

No skin to peel away from this fractured skeleton. Just the meat we assume will feed us. No worries of broken bones. No bandages on open wounds. Just ruffles in her frilly dress. Placing its bets. On dirty windows.

Soft experiments on the hunger. Glorify the villains.

The wet door at her back. Heavy and undecided. The glue under her fingernails contemplating. Which ends to connect. It's only forever she sighs. Not very long at all. When you want something.

Everyday is. The choice between sunburn and stitches. It hurts to move. It hurts just as much to sit still.

The window she keeps open to the cold remarks at her obstinance. It's winter the window says. I should be closed.

I prefer to feel the cold she tells it. It's always there. I hate pretending I don't feel it.

Endless winters lost in the earth. Teach me to keep digging, but not for what I should search. The chill poses its riddles and waits for my guess. I answer its warm someplace. I don't need to be there to know this.