This is an item that I will be continuously editing. It first appeared as napowrimo #4b

1.
“I like being loved by you.”
Dani desperately desiring leads to remorse while she is lying on the sidewalk.

What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

2.
Dani is now up and about. She can’t remember a before for this place, although surely it has one. Wasn’t there a before before this after?

3.
Dani is in her head watching him sleep. But she can’t see it. He was never able to sleep near her crying crying crying.

4.
Dani says Andrew I love you. Over and over in her head it plays like a film reel. The problem: it’s not real. The words. And maybe the love.

Yet she craves him while she lies on the sidewalk, staring at the sun. It glares angrily back at her.

5.
Dani looks at her hands. Brown before, blackened now by the dirt of street life. Ha, she thinks. They won’t call me high yellow anymore!

Her cracked feet start to burn, and she wonders Is the cackling on the inside or the outside?

6.
If Dani runs harder, then the heat may not catch her nerves in time. She still thinks she can outrun the sun.

In the darker moments, she cuts because she can’t escape the glare or the fact that it returns daily. Daily. Won’t it ever take a break?

7.
Dani dances down the slope in Macarthur Park. She can feel her curls trying to rotate away. Dani sees grime and the knots, not curls.

Mariachi music darts into her ears, complaining of love lost. Dani dances in circles around the tears. Llorandooooooo.

8.
Dani’s snow angel is very quiet. Does it need a trumpet, she wonders? No, perhaps not in Canada, land of “peace keepers” with guns, where the homeless are still homeless.

9.
Dani feels the pangs of emptiness and turns to feed on his tongue. Her tongue burns on the sidewalk.

10.
Dani says, what the Lord giveth, he taketh away.