By Connor Hattie
My legs hung still, frozen like stalactites under the covers of my blanket.
My feet, dangling, uncovered in cold air by a subconscious rem-sleep tug.
My toes bobbing, baiting apprehensive shadows like timid fish to a lure.
Dark hair draped down past her shoulders, frayed on the bottom, strung
Gritty, coarse; attached to her scalp like bearded usnea articulata poorly
Glued to an introverted Douglas fir; lost in a wooded maritime province.
A tattered tunic dress cloaked the contours of whatever lied underneath,
billowing unobtrusively in the short gusts of nature’s pulmonary breath.
Obsidian nails glisten upon her fingers in the moonlight's midnight aura.
Her head turned- the sort of way a dog does-
hearing an odd-distant unrecognizable sound-
slowly, chin higher than shoulder. Her glance
met my eyes- her face: translucent like fog,
faint like an unbothered elderly vein, or the
stretched skin of a rawhide indigenous drum.
She scuttled from the foot of my bed backwards, gaze locked on mine.
Encroaching my bedroom door, slippery, silently, like a scarab beetle-
avoiding the cold hard boot of mankind’s harshest nightmare: reality.