"As long as there is room for error,"
she said,
"I am content."
her hair was that of a shih tzu,
her eyes were those of a raccoon.
when she felt something deeply, she couldn't eat.

she whispered about the color orange(turned a sickly green)
and enjoyed the repetition of vowel sounds.
one spell away from invisibility—
like shutting your eyes when the world is spinning too quickly—
and three snaps from sanity.
she held my hand before I knew her heart,
her fingers were a birds nest
but mine were chocolate and
melting fast.
"I'm feeling another person,"
she said.
"It is from my soul, and it is giving me cancer."

before dawn she got up and stretched her limbs
until they were elastic,
(longer than sausage links)
and almost reached the moon.
I was never afraid of the marks her teeth left on my furniture;
still,
it was coming out of her pocket.
her eyes were those of my dead husband
(I was almost sure she'd dug them from his very skull),
and she looked from side to side
until they rolled back in their sockets,
demonic
sensual
fiery.

"Dying is something I did in my past life,"
she told me.
"I won't be making the same mistake in this one."