At nineteen, sharing the bed with a
        blind woman from the shelter and her black
cat, too sick to speak on my worst
        days, of course I was afraid.
Each dawn the smarting sky
        froze into an endless pool of
gold-flaked ice, its vast twisted corpse
        hiding a corpse. When I approached
I saw myself suspended in resin.
        Jinx! I needed nothing to
know that I was gone.
        Light being light, I saw what I saw.
Men being men, they left me with
        nothing but my body.
Of course I screamed. Of course
        people didn’t hear. My death was
quick and unspectacular. The first
        responders were like yeah we
see this all the time. Blind woman
        told me what her husband did to her
until the morning light indicted him.
        Violets grew like bruises in the yard
while soil sat unwatered,
        xeric and sightless. I’d been too
young for years and was happily
       zombified. The future was over. Even I knew.