Broken Dolls

We love the night's nameless quiet, bask in the shadows that cast across our pink canopy beds. The way the cats' bodies curl together like commas at my toes. In my mouth I taste the softest hint of peach, the softest hint of blood. My mother puts calla lilies in a vase, the length of her throat tender and white. Her eyes distant and sad. It's the strange things that make me melancholy, the hand soap, the air freshener.

So much dust everywhere. Fingerprints on the TV screen. On the dishwasher. It gets under my skin, this soft disorder, this gentle decay. Absorbs into my dreams. The dead bodies of flies litter the house. As if my thoughts, a million tiny betrayals, killed them.

I look into the mirror to see the want written all over me. The bath tub's edge like a swollen lip. Maybe it was like this as a baby, this fear of dark, wet places. Too many faces in the wallpaper. Those without mouths, without the tender warmth of voices. Every velvet rosette an eye, watching. Waiting. The scent of Chanel hovering above the crib.