Each morning is a rusted keyhole. The air parts resentfully, cold crawling to the dustless corners. On the pale wallpaper hyacinths bloom ceaselessly; polyester amaranths furl from crystal bowls. Life is bottled here, its frantic static stilled to silence. For years it has been the same. She walks the white carpet, erasing her own footprints. She fears that she is followed. Even in this stale garden, a dark breath stirs the paper petals. In nightmares, she pulls wide the door and daylight crashes like a wave, Pandora’s horrors filtering in upon the too-bold sun. For years it has been the same— always a death about to turn up like a white root on a spade.
Jacqueline West currently lives and writes in Madison, WI. Her work has appeared in Hidden Oak, Barbaric Yawp, and Mytholog, among others, and is forthcoming in Not One of Us and an anthology from Dark Cloud Press.
