BY: Elizabeth Hazen

Her breasts heave, thrusting
cleavage into slants

of glowing blue, and through
her cotton nightgown

you see her nipples wink.
I watch the wash

of eerie light accentuate
the dark between her

girlish thighs. Someone
with leather gloves

reflected in a knife.
Her legs are long and slender;

each frame shortens
her nightie. Tension mounts;  

the killer strikes, and she grasps
at nothing, her face

warping like a rubber mask;
her body shudders.

A gasp like hard candy
catches in my throat.

Elizabeth Hazen is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared or will appear in Best American Poetry, American Literary Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, The Normal School, and other journals. Her first book, Chaos Theories, was published in 2016. Her second book will be released in 2020.