i :

 a slanted wish and its two-tongued answer.      a misspelling of melted snow. 

morning runs in the cold, in shorts, in shrunken sneakers thumping 

pavement, the cysts are rattling inside me like loose change in a pocket.

synonyms for decay : rot,    

                                      wither,    
 
                                      the wrong kind of quiet. 

the ghost of a grief so shape

less 

it can hardly be grief 

at all. 		the filmy skirt of its body, the thickening 

softness of my own, a house 

haunted by itself 

is just a door.

Author of the article

Sophie Hoss is a New York writer who loves the ocean and is in bed by 9pm every night. She has received a Pushcart Prize, has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction, and was a semifinalist for the American Short(er) Fiction Prize. Her words are scattered around in BOMB, The Baffler, The Los Angeles Review, The Southampton Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. Also, she has a small dog named Elmo who likes to wear little sweaters.