Lenore’s Song

Your sweat glistens like the pissy condensation on the side of the urinal at a dive bar. While your esteemed face flushes to the color of a raw pork chop. I’ve got so much time for metaphors now.
Maybe you should spend your time at the gym instead of luring in younger women, but it’s much too late now. So here you are straining with your shovel, musing that it’s not as easy as it looks on Netflix to my lifeless body.
When you came up on Tinder, I was like, hey, free dinner. You know. I just like to meet people. It was my bandmate that recognized you, the writer of a book that made her shiver.
It’ll be a story to tell, Lenore said. Do it for the anecdote. Do it for the confessional lyrics.
But then you had to go and rip out all my pages.
So you see, you really did this to yourself.
You’re breathing really hard now, you should probably take a rest. A man of your age and ill keep should recognize his limits, but you’ve always had trouble with boundaries, haven’t you?
Oh, your struggle and toil, it’s pleasantly unpleasant, the way it twists your expression, the way your chest heaves, the way your heart tap tap taps against your ribcage.
I guess you don’t have people for this, do you?
You don’t tip, but here’s a tip for you: take an aspirin.
You don’t have one, though, not out here, and you do really need to get this done before the sun breaks the night’s cover and the hikers come, the runners, the meddlers, and the witnesses.
So hurry, baby, dig dig dig.
I drift around you, unseen, but you feel me, don’t you? My icy fingers push into your torso, right through your sternum, into the ventricles of your heart. I squeeze your veins and make you scream in the dark despite your best efforts.
Your efforts just aren’t enough, are they? They never were, and that’s why you took what wasn’t yours, and why I now take what is mine.
I know you hear me when you gasp and seize up. When you topple down and starfish on top of what used to be me. You hear me when I hum a song for Lenore, a song of retribution to carry you to hell.

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Amber Baird (she/they) is from Dayton, OH and works and writes in Portland, OR, where she studies under authors Chelsea Cain and Chuck Palahniuk. Previous work has appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review and Digging Through the Fat. Find them on Twitter or Instagram @amberbairdpdx.