Chapter Seven

Cheating the division. Saving fractions as she did. The world in a lazy flame. Too weak to awaken. The colors in the soil. As her heels scrape. The rut.

The playground. The creaking swing set. A thousand eyes fixed on the ground. As her monster comes into focus.

A pressure behind her vision. A dull ache in the tilt of her limbs. As she talks her legs through the process of climbing out of the cellar. Lurching for a distant light. A series of numbers. Eager to be multiplied.

Peering through the pinhole. Satisfied by the absence of light. Everything is small. And far away. Her blood a thunder. A helicopter rising in her veins. Her fist is made of rotting fruit. Her bones are quivering gelatin. As her face flirts with the knuckles of the moment's fist.

Years gone by she knew it true. That she had found herself later and would again. The candle small. The stairs fallen. But that cellar just where she had left it. Moist soil and stalled clocks painting the air in the ripe of mildew. And doors heavy with broken skin.