trel

somewhere downstairs, a door slams. she sits reading by flickering candlelight ignoring the shadows that threaten to swallow her. the ink smudges under her fingertips. from downstairs the shouting doesn’t stop. she bites her tongue and flips a page too fast and it scrapes against the dry surface of her nails in a way that makes her molars twinge in sympathy. the door is locked. she’s been trying since morning to pry it open but all she has at her disposal are broken nails and a box of matches.

her hands are greasy like the time she couldn’t stop petting the mouse she never even got to name as it wiggled and wiggled to get out of her grip. or like that one time papa screamed at the woman with the too-red mouth and afterwards stayed in the kitchen far too long washing the dishes and it scared her that she couldn’t hear the sounds of plates breaking, but he heard her crying and came out and placed a heavy hand on her head and later she couldn’t get the scent of fried eggs out of her hair no matter how many showers she took. that kind of grease. the kind that stayed imprinted on your soul. like the bad tattoo that nico didn’t realize that he wouldn’t want later, even though it slipped so easily onto his tender skin when he first offered it up.

the doorknob is stiff and it doesn’t turn and she thinks about ghost towns, specifically the kind that had found a home in people’s hearts, so that even if you spent all night knocking and knocking and trying to say hello you shouldn’t be surprised if the only answer you got was a sigh, the unwilling kind that trees make in the breeze, when they’re forced to say, “i’m here, yes, i am here.”