She grips unwashed bedsheets and tenses to hold chapped, sluggish lips away from her mouth but above her neck.
On the unlit ceiling, a familiar blank canvas, she imagines pricking her fingertips on the needles of pine trees
and falling asleep beneath towering conifer guardians with sap dripping down their trunks.
Her skin screams like the last breath before falling beneath the surface of cool, summer water.
Through shallow, tolerant breaths she remembers gasping for air after being submerged in the river,
scrambling to adjust her top after the impact forced it up over her chest.
Heat and harsh pressure interrupt the memory,
and it falls through her fingertips like sand in a glass timer.
Rough hands paw erratically at her side like a pen running out of ink,
and she thinks about the letters they used to write
and the letters she’s written since.
PLUTO BLOOMING 