When the pills stopped working,
she wondered if it was because she couldn't taste them
or because she'd run out
of the house with her heart on fire
and nobody had seen the flames.
Her manuscript men marched above her mantle in little inky rows
like birthday candles, like promises from childhood made in redwood shadows and crimson-weeping cuts touched like jumper cables.
There was heat, there was warmth
and it was ugly, ever changing
like opinions and faces and the way it felt
to be touched.