As I eat,
we watch her totter through a room
of ghosts,
a living room that is anything but.

She smiles, 
turns,
tumbles,
grabs fistfulls of sweets,
so fitting for the cavity that will soon 
follow.

When we come home,
candy litters the floor,
each left with the imprint
of a small child’s death grip.

Slowly, these walls have become 
a cage of bone. Ensnared between
memory and misery,
I take one more bite and lie still.