there's an intent in the skin on her hip bones from where ghostly fingers used to grip them with the desperation of wanting to carve a swansong in the bones below. scarlet bruises mar the sweet peach of her summer skin, the spidery tendrils sweeping up into every crook and nanny. as time progressed and she became older (and lonely and yearning and hopeless and-), she would will herself to believe the comfort that left her long before she knew what she had would somehow, somewhere, come back to her and embrace like the child she never was.

tears would drip from her half-moon lids when she thought of the affair she only knew of for mere seconds, curling off the lashes in a show of beauty while tremors would snake along her spine like the devil's fingers.

she would have nightmares, terrible nightmares of images and flashes of darkness so deep and so black and so absolutely horrifying that she would wake every morning with cheeks crusted with salt and lips trembling with words unable to pass from the dried insides of her throat.

there's a shaking she can't quite shake off her bones, a permanent shiver that aches like knobby knees grinding together in a grotesque dance. her heart swells like a child's rainbow stained balloon, popping when exposed to unfamiliar lands.

she wants to feel her feet on the ground again, toes curling into the grass and dirt and cigarette butts she grew up with when she was something small and insignificant.

she just wants to return home.