On the edge of the bed she sat
ripping page after page out of a
yellowing paperback dictionary.

The muted orange glow of the
arc-sodium street lamps outside
of the bedroom window cast her
face in shades of fire, and the sounds
of tearing paper mocked her
in sharp snores of the sleep that
would not greet her weary mind.

Certain words and definitions
would catch her eye in brief
inspiration, but the feeling
was always gone before
the page even hit the floor.

Strips of clothing and shredded
documents littered the carpet and
covered the bed in spiteful layers
of contempt as the scissors she used
to massacre his favorite shirts and
jeans lay open in her lap, still hungry
for more of the revenge she had been
enacting all night long.

Her fingers began to cramp up
and she realized that she was
bleeding from countless paper
cuts covering her knuckles, leaving
macabre fingerprints on the pile
of torn pages from his pocket
dictionary now lying between
her bare feet and painted toes.

Now removed from her trance
by the acute pain and blood
she managed a fleeting glance
at the page still in her palm,
numbered 236-237 and right
on the cusp of the L section
and the M section, she spied
the word that drove her to
this in the first place.

Beneath a darkening crimson droplet read
"love n  1: great and warm affection,"
she sighed, crumpling up the thin
paper and popped it in her mouth as she
began to chew and began to cry.

She chewed and she cried and she chewed
until it was nothing more than a *** of pulp,
tasting faintly of copper and resting sourly on
her tongue, when she swallowed it whole and laid
her throbbing head down on the shredded
pillow, finally able to get some sleep with her
tummy full of love.