A hand on a young girl's waist
With drops of blood falling to the sheets
And a whimper escaping chapped lips
At the expense of waking an empty house
Full of caring and deaf ears
And for that matter, blind eyes
Drowning in lies, smiles, and bleach.

Flesh falling off adolescent bone
On a public sofa in a warm living room
Crowded with dead loved ones
Or the images of events
Gone by in her life.

Her body curls in on the sofa
Collapsing as it sinks into the corners
So her toes do not linger an inch
From dead bodies and ice and cloth
When she escapes from the cushions
Those dead legs get in her path
A fraction of a second of touching-

Blood on her legs and staining pink sheets
Pain in her stomach and tears streaming
Grunts in her ears and clothes strewn-

She was cold before she left the heat
And her toes curled as she limped
Red splashing the dark floor
And whimpers escaping stapled lips
As she fell into a different type of cold
And the blood froze on the page
Lined with blue tears and sweat.