December

The ice storm brings her late with locks of hair wormed on her neck. He drops her ruined shoes in the kitchen, hands her a plastic cup of rum. She drinks it, too fast. This is how she commits. To eyelash glue, to pleather thigh-highs. She scratches her lighter gear. When he opens the box, she recalls the flick of ash at the stoplights, her fingers clumsy on the dials. How the noise of sleet and static drowned out her struggling car. The crackle of tissue, the tear of it in his hands, is the sound of all her birthdays. It is the sound of children sputtering on a cake crowded with flames. Children at Christmas, ripping things apart to their insides.