Then she rolled over on her belly,
to hide the immediate past. Lit up some contraband mixed
with whatever, and breathed deeply.
But before, when anticipation mixed with pumping blood and
possibilities, smoke obscured features that would soon cause
contempt, voice like velvet chocolate music.
After that, petroleum based velveteen caressing her skin eroding, it seemed, through her flesh down to the bones.
The couch smelled of a past filled with lies and humiliation
and unfilled futures. But the process continued to the end,
as it had a billion times before, and would a billion times
again.
After that, as truth revealed itself to her and rage flared bright
like fat falling burning onto hot coals, the laces of her
boots pressed life out of the husk on top of her not dramatically but hot and suffocatingly bone-splintering painful.
Two kinds of memory left on her flesh.
She did not like it.
Then she rolled over on her belly,
to hide the immediate past. Lit up some contraband mixed
with whatever, and breathed deeply.