Jolt awake. The moon is high and full—she is no longer sleeping beside you. Find her retching into the toilet bowl, porcelain gleaming a pale blue. Hand her a glass of water. “Thank you,” she says, swirling water around in her mouth. Her face is a bleached seashell, slickened with sweat. Your kiss is a prayer on her temple.

Dallas Woodburn’s short fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in The Nashville Review, Monkeybicycle, and Diverse Voices Quarterly; her plays have been produced in New York and Los Angeles. Recent awards include the Ninth Glass Woman Prize, the Brian Mexicott Playwriting Award, and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize. She is an M.F.A. candidate in Fiction at Purdue University, where she teaches undergraduate writing courses and serves as Fiction Editor of Sycamore Review. www.writeonbooks.org.