Gracious Suicides

The meat on the stove simmering. The house all afoul with the dead things I must consume. She tries to count the atoms in each molecule of his skin. But loses her place somewhere in the billions.

It's a long walk she knows. From the front door to the back. Even in this small house. Where all the walls are deaf. The outside. That freedom is always distant. As it should be. Especially with addicts.

The warm nights cull what little is left of her fruits. The weather embeds its paradigms in her flesh. But she doesn't listen. To the hungry wind. Doesn't see. The darkness struggling. With the mania that is memory.

Thinking in ghosts. Deciding in morticians. There are fragments. There are wholes. But they always choose too late.