Her hand is on fire
as it moves,
mechanical,
slowly toward
the doorknob.
The rest of her
is somewhere else.
He’s on the other side
of the door. There was begging
on the phone, there was crying.
There are two little girls
in clean summer pajamas
upstairs in their beds.
The door is locked.
He’s crying, he’s knocking.
She’s about
to do it, like all the girls
in the movies who see
something in the dark
in a mask, hear something
with a buzz saw
and a hunger for life out
in the bushes and
—her hand,
her hand is screaming—
they open the door and
they feed it.