Monsters Under the Bed

The torn edge of her eyelash. Stuck to my fingertip. The frayed stitch in her ambivalence. Caught the silence speaking. Too loudly. The words on her lips are treason. The shock of her skin is loyalty. Soft daggers skim the grave. Shifting the equation from how to when. Any lies could ever be as potent as this one is.

The angle closes on choice. Focusing negatives seek the prime. The calculation is brief. The answer finite. Except how. And why. Tales are told. Lives are absolved. To thoughtless indiscretions. Calm enough in their calamities. To forget. Anything that can't take us there.

The Frankenstein in his lab. Fumbles with the lightning. The monster in his bed. Barely awake. He works the corpse. The flatulently dead veins. For traces of disease. For tumbled drinks. And arrogant cocktails. That play with the scale. Measuring so many nothings. Trying so desperately to convince dead skin that it can feel.

It's her arithmetic that stalls on. Monsters under the bed. Counting backward from zero.