With a napkin and a felt-tip pen she wrote:

ice crystals form on

Lily's loins ready to pounce

as winter clamps down

Daydreaming as neon glowed behind her, my friend handed me her poem.

I borrow these words and voice to talk about Lily tonight because my own thoughts are strolling somewhere in wet cement.

I might just squeeze things down to syllables, paring chatter into meaning.

Like lyrics or poems or highway signs, the terse words puncture.

A soft rain outside

Mumbles farewell to summer

Each day's light fading

Lily sleeps. A thicker skin wraps her ribs since last winter.

I did not imagine her dead until she was beyond danger. Then I let the What Ifs settle around me with their shiny daemon eyes. Lately I worry at the tufts of hair spilling, ticks crawling and slipping disease into her blood.

Words sleep, the mind floats, and I uncurl my fingers waiting for dreams.