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Missing

Nick Kimbro

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The lights are switched on. And off. On during the day and off at night.

Sometimes she will enter the kitchen without noticing, a book folded against her chest. Then a flicker will cause her to look and she will see it—a light on top of light, barely perceptible, but there.

At night she sits in the armchair in the living room. It is cracked and discolored with age. She is reading again. Always reading. The lights are turned off and she is stranded suddenly between text and body. Her imagination is boundless. She will accept anything now—the disintegration of self, the reintegration of other.

Moonlight pours in from the patio.

Her silhouette is watched. From the darkness. A pale sliver of light illuminates her pulse. Bumps form on her skin, reaching for something dear and barely forgotten. The room goes cold and her breath releases in a cloud, takes shape around a face.

Her hair is parted, her cheek caressed, her lips stung with cold.