Her skeleton is not visible anymore
from under her skin,
and her legs no longer wobble like
those of a fawn learning to step
when she walks.

Her cheeks are filled back in
with the colors of his mother's garden,
and you'll never see the picture
her sister snapped
of the ghost that once drained
it from them.

She sleeps to rest, not to escape,
and you'd never suspect
that the glass on her nightstand
had been filled with whiskey
for seven months
to chase down the pain pills
she took every morning
for her father's bad back.
Now it's filled with water.

She dreams of more than death.
She dreams of life.
A life without him,
and a life without them,
and a life without hopelessness
and sorrow and regret.
A life free of the pain of his torches,
but not free of feeling.

"I can't live without you," she promised him
through drunken midnight tears.
But, hell, he wasn't the only one who
could break a promise.