Peculiar Quarks and Ordinary Atoms

The small cancers in her smile were grotesque, but for the most part benign. She could write a novel with just the still of her lips. As they antcipated lazy eulogies of sex. If it's dead, she thought, I cannot have a funeral for it. Because it was selfish of it to die first. If it's dead, she reasoned, let it be dead the same way that it lived. Unnoticed.

The eyes talk to the lips when there's nothing else to do. Each thought a carbeutartor in her head filtering the exhaust. Poorly constructed costumes betraying the illusion. Diaperless babaies drowning in their own shit.

She factual in the lies she wears. Frenetic evening gowns court their heavens with a wealth of sequins and a good dose of cleavage. She sighs that it's close enough, determined that it isn't.

Her cancer comes and goes as it pleases. Perhaps with the weather. Her lips suffocate in the words. Her voice has amnesia. She reads their faces. Like she would any petition. Let someone else struggle to save what is already lost.

She was a tortoise once in an old fable. She doesn't remember. How it turned out.