VIII

Her heart was brown and viscous, not like mud, but like tidal silt, like she was a river lying low in reclaimed marsh land, and responsibility had built a causeway through her so that on one side she became a lake too dank and dirty to swim in, and on the other, she became the antithesis of erosion. Like tidal silt she piled up like flesh. If the high tide was her skin at its best, it barely covered her. Her heart was brown like tidal silt, and it was crowded, like she had been living there for years.