Starving the Eulogy

The movie was paused. Pirate's eyeliner and all. Brick curtains on every view. Of the statistician looming above his pad. The threat of probability weighing on his pen. In grunts of breath that borrowed their drama from novels he'd read as a child. Written reports on. Essays subtitled with satire. For the ways we pick apart the things that are mysterious. Until we are sure it is as impotent as we are. Memories bent over to retrieve their underwear while we imagine ourselves inside them once more. The wolves in grandma's pajamas. The big teeth in her bed.

They argued so loudly from below that she considered abandoning her weekly ritual of becoming one of the lead characters in some foreign abstract movie. The kind her and only a handful of strangers shared as having seen. All the way through without blushing or masturbating. Without dismissing the dialogue as pretentious when the dreams sequences took effect.

The tuna she'd had for breakfast still hiding in place where the toothbrush couldn't go. She grinned at the mirror with aged teeth. Finding the years she'd misplaced hidden in the subtle cavities.

Contemplating the crossword she's left on the kitchen table. In long sips of thirsty words. In the creaking stairs of people she once knew. Or at least hoped she had.

In diminutive heavens. In disapproptionate utopias. She had told all her stories. Licked the stars with a bitter tongue. Convinced the pain it belonged to her.

And taken everything there was to steal from the people she had loved.