by Cathy Ulrich

She will be the ticking hand, the shining numbers, the one, two, three, click of seconds passing, the glowing skin of dial painters, pucker of their mouths on radium-coat brushes, hollowing of their bones, the graves, the graves, the graves, and she will shine like a ghost and shine like a dying sun, and she will shine and she will shine, the lingering half-life of sixteen hundred years, and sit in the night beside you, whispering the names of the dead, her voice the cracking of their teeth, her shush-hands in her lap the sound of their last dimming breaths.

Cathy Ulrich used to wear a children’s Winnie the Pooh watch when she was in college. She has very thin wrists. Her work has appeared in various journals, including 100 Word Story, Adroit and Wigleaf.