The house watches me lay still. I am on the tile again, something like a deer split on the road. Little corona of yellowed stomach acid around my hair. Skin cocaine powder pale. Bitter taste of mom's prescription behind my teeth, and whatever life left oozing from the corner of my lips. The house watches me flicker out like the holiday lights hung up outside. People in the next room are laughing over roasted turkey. And that's fine, I wish them nothing but goodness.
When I roll over onto my back and face the swimming ceiling light, I hear a plate shatter in the kitchen. The house must think me such a small, untouchable thing in this suspended drag of slow decay. My lips are so very cold. I can't remember my name. I can remember laying under the streetlights in the winter, downy snowflakes dusting my plush cheeks. I feel my late grandfather poking me with his snow-caked cane, "time to go back inside", he says.