the oddsmaker wants a word

laid out dead on bedsheets, deadly sleepless in the pre-dawn. how do lips still move here? how do i still kick off the covers? a doll come to life, pulled upright on invisible strings, searches the light switch, a glass of water in the night-time. are you a woman or a child? small thing, small white thing crept in on by all the darkness that seethes and ripples over this half of the world. black mark on the mouth. stains everything, drips from the lips and smears. ses rêves de jeunes fille bâttu, the bruised childhood dreams bled out and hung like manacles around the thinnest of necks, scraping the delicate clavicles, restricting the voice, heavy on the sternum, heavy like regret and deceit and sick merit.

the invisible leaden hand thrusts your head under inthe bathtub, the long hair folding in in the face like the petals closing around a flower. blind and airless, a more pressurized tomb of womb temperatured darkness. not deaf, but magnified and distorted, whalesong of protested drowning, and all the black ink bleeding to the surface in evil-colored ribbons. qiuet, little thing, don't struggle. we'll warm this needle before it finds your spine. we'll lay you down gently at the bottom of this well, let your hair float up like sea-grass, to graze the bellies of whales, let the glassy eyes be forever reflected in the filtered down light from a faraway sun