The drinks are all downed, drowned in the pit of her stomach with smoke accidentally swallowed from saying, this…has to stay…between you and me. In her stomach, there are edibles that are hard to keep inside.
            Sheets and pillows, once washed, from late nights of beer spills and lust, are in boxes, duck taped three times around the perimeter to keep from mold that lurks on the unpainted ceilings and walls with folded edged paintings. Photographs of her, letters written from seven years prior sleep in laminated binders stacked against bound furniture. She craves nostalgia, tasted only on Thursdays when she lay in the boxes of the sheets and pillows, when she fingers through the photographs with labels on the bottoms of each day she lived since she was eighteen. When she walks through each letter composed of, I will take care of you, I want you to know, Into your hands, Put the past away, Skeletons don’t live in closets, they’re not supposed to, You have to. The cupboards empty for three weeks and five days sink like a hermits shell in her mind, in bound boxes.

            Today she realized she feared crowds. She realized she feared new situations. She realized she feared being alone. She felt more fear.
            She wanted to feel want and to be spoiled by affection and strong hands. She was second best to many but each temporary love did not realize the strength she held in herself was slowly being eaten by the fear that no one taught her to accept. The leaves fell, and then grew back marking the time passing which were only a few months, a few weeks, a few days, but she could not remember anymore. She forgot how to dream.

            She woke up on a Wednesday. Her thighs thick with sweat and her right hand tucked beneath them. Her mouth was the inside of a cotton ball, her nose dripped periodically throughout the night. A puddle of crust stained her pillowcase. She would not wash it for another month and a few days. When she opened her eyes for the day, her t-shirt wore a thin layer of sweat, and she looked into the mirror to see that her skin was soft with freckles she had not seen before.  She splashed her face with tap water, and lathered it with a bar of dial soap. For a minute she looked into her grey eyes, “Temperamental, like the cat. You two are never the same tint.”
            She felt her way to the bedroom with the six A.M. darkness filtering in between the light wooden shutters. She gathered back into the sheets and looked to the ceiling for comfort. “I’m glad you’re here.” She leaned against the white washed walls, her knees tucked under her.