Cluckering now cleekering; soon schlakering. The highs have thinned. Bedroom padded, a cell of glass block and furnace-thrum. He hears the ghost of his eight-year-old pulse against the desk, but the edges have eroded, bluntered and edgeless. Warfarin-thin. A swiftwater rush, a fleshly haunting beneath the breath. A private lethality. Untransmittable. Incontractable. He dries, suffocating in the emerging silence of his own blood.

” . . . but the edges have eroded, bluntered and edgeless. Warfarin-thin. A swiftwater rush, . . .​”