For the nighttimes, when we swallow

A walk
through the glowing hallway,
face powdered and lips curled,
with hair sticky, glittery, messy
and a glass in hand.

She collapsed on the carpeted floor,
reached her arms above her head,
fingertips touching the pink of the sunrise,
that leaked from the opening
of a kitchen door.

His hands were on her stomach.
She said, stop.
Him, again. Him,
and a drunken laugh.

Her stomach filled with liquor,
her mind filled with words,

those rooms filled with people she couldn’t name,
and friends she doesn’t know.

As he put on his jacket,
and searched for the car keys,
She wrote the sonnet in her mind.

For cognizance,
for consciousness,
for her eyes that
filled with tears.