vi.

he watched her in her deepest sleep;

for a moment he could swear he almost saw her breathe.

i. Before

1993: sitting at his step mother's house where she kissed him on the mouth and he almost touched her blouse.

ii.

1996: he kissed her neck and she cradled his head as she wrapped her legs around his waist and he laid her on her bed.

iii.

20 weeks: the house slept as her cancer repulsed and they sat together as her shoulders convulsed.

iv.

16 weeks: he remembered the dress she wore when her hair fell out in fistfuls to the floor and her mom said she was adorning; she burned that dress the next morning.

v.

8 weeks early: he clutched her hand and held her too close and she slipped away as her bones turned to shadows.

vi.

for a moment he could swear he almost saw her breathe.

The smell of pennies filled the tiled floors and fluorescent lights with a thick, wet urgency that seeped from the cracks in the pale pink walls and weighed heavily on her broken wings. Blind heat shone through her fractured ribs and quarts of quarters billowed out between her lips. With her hands slick with metal and eyes tired with lead she began to slip; falling into comforting cool darkness that reminded her of the feeling of your temple pressed to a glass on the road to nowhere on a subway train or a car filled with people you've known all your life but have never really known. Her heart flew out of chest and reached up her throat. She could almost make out her own voice catching on the air as she gasped for redemption.

Crescendo Crescendo Crescendo.