Hollow Heart

I’ve always been pale: as a little girl, as a grown-up, as a corpse

The swans were replaced with large black ducks, raggedy and slow-witted, and then by depressing bronze herons

Now and then, lying in bed, I’d start shaking. It was all too easy for me to match shivers to memories. My own memories, or those my mother had infected me with.

My eyes have always been best when they’re shut, like twin Pandora’s boxes