daylight enters at the back of the house and escapes out the front window, beneath which keri ann poses on the bed. she’s naked by five in the afternoon, cozied up next to an empty bottle of beefeater, an old friend whose name escapes her ass up on the blue cotton sheets. keri ann’s nipples are pink and soft, and her winter braids trellised the mahogany bed posts back in april. she hasn’t thought to get up in a while.

when so drunk she can’t keep her eyes open one second more, she points a long lonely finger skyward and holds it steady at the ceiling, daring the hip roof to lift off and fly away. when a younger girl, she could hold all the things she loved in her head at once, a thin wicker basket spattered with limp bloodroot, picked and already dead. in a dream last night, she carried them to the lincoln street bridge and tossed them out, watched the petals scatter, the stamen wash away.

all her body parts hurt. this time of year, she breaths through a shattered snow globe sitting high in her chest. on the inhale, glass rattles, and when she coughs, red little pellets sleet into her hand. her heartbeat triggers tiny electrical pulses in all her nerve endings. and when her eyes dilate and constrict, she watches as if from behind a stranger's corneal lens. when the sun at last comes in her room to set and say goodnight, it singes her eyes until she's forced to look away.