Photo by Михаил Секацкий on Unsplash
Because alone is too hard,
she scans her bookshelf
pretending to be someone
else. Someone specific
and wrong—someone who shouldn’t
be in her house. An hour goes by
in the mirror. Stepping back from red
thinking not again she runs
a bath and soaks
another hour. She screens calls
from people she knows,
communicating only
through text. In the evening
in the dark she sits
on the floor with the couch
shielding her from the window
before she crawls to the door
to double-check the lock. Each time
she reaches to turn the key
she flinches, envisions a hand
grabbing hers. In bed
she cannot bear the silence,
and the gray light
through the blinds offers
no talk. She calls an ex
who always answers,
even in his sleep.
Claire Denson is a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro, where she served as Editorial Intern for The Greensboro Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Sporklet, and Hobart, among others. You can find her at clairedenson.com.