I sit on the carpet
where gaps are filled
with chewing gum and dead spiders,

it's here, time,
I tell her everything;
use the words that are scribbled
on the paper with bright pink ruled
lines and no margins
kept in a shoebox beneath my bed.

The curtains were moth-eaten.

Damp marks left from leaks
swirl shapes on the
ceiling and the wall behind me,
smelling like clothes
that have flapped in the rain
and fallen in a pile, then worn
too many times;

in here, this time,
the whole building appears
abandoned,
yet with the windows intact
and exterior bricks
red, new.

The smell of summer
stays outside.

She stares at me with those
blue crystals
with sharp edges still not glittering when
the last of the day's sunlight
sneaks in through closed curtains.
They are fake, not even glass;
ice: melting down her face.
A body of a snow man on
patrol in summer, her posture becomes
increasingly flaccid, the skin on her stomach
ripples, visible through her pyjama vest.

I watched my words eat her,
exposing the crevasse beneath her collarbone,
curving her stomach concave;
crunching on her fingernails

until only her eyes were left on the floor,
covered in fluff and dust;
the sort of debris that even bad news
won’t touch; the innate sense of survival.

Left dumb and immobile
with pupils searching the air for an apology,
she blinks one last dry, scraping blink
before her eyelids drop to the floor
like leaves from an autumn tree.