straight to her bedroom
asking giving hungry yawning like a threat the muzzle of a laugh the rotting leaves squatting in dandelions moments before fallen from the center she drapes his face in grass the curve of the earth her breath will smell his bed beside his bride his pillow and the lip of an almost yes he suspects you are other than you are so far
begging at the door was a reminder that some lived hungry
seeing a body barely kept alive an interim of flesh reflecting the hot sun soot resurfacing from his stunned look with bits of language standing waiting a dollar from my purse and then upstairs i cut a piece of chocolate cake put it in a birthday plate and asked him to come in his thin body smells of my avoidance though i saw beneath a handsome man whose head dropped to his chest he slept the children fine but i was feeling feverish among the range of squeaky voices through the windows the sound of an ambulance the rotting summer heat seeping into the dense swamp of children and when he woke his tongue was floating in the stagnant space of his mouth as he tried to speak his voice and skin were burned it seemed the way he thanked me and i made him a can of soup and asked him to stay
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