Early afternoon lights across her body. Her eyes are closed. A toddler rests on her naked torso. His belly is round and presses against her as they breathe. Her hand is in his hair. His hair is coarse and curly. It feels auburn, tending towards orange. There is the sound of traffic outside and a key turning in a door downstairs. The child has dampened her skin with drool. His nose is running. His mouth is open and heats her breast as he breathes. He smells of sour milk, strawberries, cigarettes and stale beer. The stubble on his chin chafes her nipple as he moves through dreams.

She presses open the screen door, careful of splinters. Red clay and dust billow up from the concrete. She faces the corner of Broadway and Eighth street. The street light is broken. It is flashing yellow, eleven and blue. The businessmen in their Model TÕs are shouting in French at the priest and the Buckingham Bobbies who are trying to direct their traffic. Across the street she catches eyes with one of a dozen or so Victorian orphans playing in the gutter. The child smiles in a sepia toned frame and lifts a syringe carefully from the subway grate at her feet. The child eats it quickly and she tastes limes and honey. The picture is faded and frayed in places but the child is wearing glitter nail polish. Possibly purple. The childÕs smile grows until the gums bleed and the corners of her lips go past the hairline.

In their hotel room he has packed her things. He adores her. She throws open the door. She is naked. He is wearing her white bathrobe over his clothes. She pulls him out of it and wraps the robe around herself. Her lover frowns and places his hands on his hips. Police cars, fire trucks, abulances, school buses and helicopters swarm the street below their window. She is standing on the ledge. The glass is closed between them. She does not know how she got out or how to get back in. The wind has ripped the robe half off and her knuckles turn white trying to hold it. He is wearing it or one identical inside, pressed and tied neatly. ÒWell,Ó his face mouthes, ÒI think you are being extremely selfish.Ó Her body steps back off of the ledge. She watches clouds and the edges of the terry bathrobe as she is falling.

In a high society civil war era parlor, she is sitting with the adult children of her infant cousin. They are all dressed like punks and sip their tea with legs crossed at the ankle. All but the youngest who is draped in black velvet and suckles the baby, her mother, from a breast pressed to her neck by the corset. The daughter sits frozen like a china doll for hours at a time and then cries out and covers the baby in kisses. Each print of black lipstick stains like another bruise on its skin. It never cries or moves. There is a knock at the door. The father of her college roommate walks in dressed as a butler and announces that her daughter is at the door. ÒMy sister?Ó she asks. ÒYour daughter.Ó Everyone is watching her. Even the china doll blinks. The infant does nothing. It may not be real. She walks to the door and there is no door, there is only her sister who collapses onto her body. The girl is unconscious and dirty. Her skin is thick and flaking and her eyes are clouded over with blue-grey, like a snake about to shed. She carries the girl into the parlor. ÒI need to give my sister a bath,Ó she says. Everyone stares at her. A punk with red boots to his knees slurps his tea and blinks. Two of the others cross and uncross their legs. The china doll tilts her head sympathetically. Her sister smells, like sweat, like something rotting. ÒI need to wash her.Ó She leaves the room and finds a tub near the entrance. She reaches up to pull the light cord but it turns on the shower instead. She undresses her sister and places her in the tub. The girl disentigrates steadily and in ashes slips down the drain.

They are making love. She watches this scene from her face, staring down at the shades of flesh, at the movement of their bodies on the bed, too close to be recognized. It is midday and light from the window bronzes their skin. She cannot feel herself. She cannot see the face of her lover. The scene continues like a silent movie, every several seconds the screen skipping, movement exaggerated for lack of sound, frames too slow for connection. Her lover is crying out. She looks down his throat for the music of it. She sees nothing. His eyes are clenched shut. She does not know where they are. She wants to ask him whose bed they are in. Her loverÕs body strains, collapses, panting, onto her. She cannot breathe.

The boys are in the backyard, playing. They are naked and barefoot and loud. They dive and drown in the red grass which is higher than their necks. ÒNot too deep now! Come back in!Ó She shouts with both hands cupping her lips. She is close enough to reach and pull them by thier shoulders from yard to porch. Their faces are laughing, and the sound of it rolls in from a great distance. ÒDonÕt worry,Ó their mouths shape, and seconds later their voices reach her, ÒweÕll be alright.Ó The boys crow and dance. They throw to each other decaying pieces of toy found at the roots of the red stalks. They raise for their motherÕs eyes rusted slates of metal, plastic dolls with singed hair and half-melted faces, nails, broken winged planes, snakes, prosthetic limbs encased in mold, splintered bats and shrapnel. The grass grows and waves like wheat, she watches it like time lapsed photography, it has deepened several feet. She calls the boys in. She smells lightning. She smells child and fire and ocean. The stalks melt and char as her body turns and walks back into the house. She shuts the scent of burning bodies outside the sliding glass doors.

The living room is full of daylight but the outside the windows it is black and indoors the rest of the family is sleeping. This is her parents house. Her lover is curled under Snoopy sheets and her Strawberry Shortcake comforter, in her room. She left him there moments earlier, drooling on the blond yarn Cabbage Patch doll. He kicks in his dreaming, and there was not room for both of them on the twin mattress, so she tucked him in alone, kissed his forehead in the silver blue light and wished on a star shining through the window. The star was made of construction paper and hung by string and paper clip just to the left of an actual moon. ÒI pledge allegiance...Ó Now she is in the living room, down the hall sixteen paces, and the door is creaking slowly open. Night shines in through the crack onto the carpet and a man enters, gun first. She is very still and good and quiet. With her mind, she presses all her weight against the door but the gun moves forward in slow inches. She changes focus to the bedroom door. She tries to lock her lover in. Her mind sings to him, it measures his breathing. ÒLullabye, and good-night.Ó Begs him to stay asleep. The man in the door sees her and advances, she watches the gun until it is in her throat. ÒLet roses be died.Ó Three more men enter. They steal the portraits in their frames. They lift the plants and the encyclopedias and hide them in their coats. The gun in her mouth itches her gag reflex. Òand lilies be spread.Ó She hears her lover turning in his sleep. She watches the men fit the walls into their pockets. Her jaw aches with opening. Òneath the babyÕs wee bed.Ó In her room her lover is nightmaring, in a moment he will wake and cry out sharply. When he does the gun will go off.