Tastes Like Then

Tasting his stale fingers. She assumed she was too late to the feast. Raw apples on the ground. Withering in the shadow of the tree above. She stood in the grin of the electric door and waited for the glass to yawn.

In or out seemed only a chuckle. Of greater gods. Or smaller men. She wasn't sure. If it even mattered which. Having spent so much of her life in those sorts of transitory paradises.

The glass does not break. When pounded by fists or swelled with tears. It only cracks. Reflecting us. As we have always been. Tired cells searching for the algebra that explains where they are going. Brittle claws chipping the paint from a wall of faces. That are always laughing.

Her skin trailing behind her. As she crawls. In spite of the logic. That would tell her to stop.

To wait for the moral to catch up to the girl in the woods.