She’s become a vampire at my door, asking without asking to come inside.

I’m not sure when she planted herself there.
Maybe she’s been there the whole time,
drinking up every drifting thought and stray laugh
as my memories of her grow stale.

But she’s been there anyway,
sitting on her heels,
sucking her fingers as she grew pale and faded,
her features receding into her face until it was smooth like a stone.
Her limbs shrank.
But her mouth grew and grew,
larger and redder by the day, toothy and thirsty.

Those brownish incisors have been gnashing lately.
I can hear them sometimes late at night,
Or in the morning while I’m stooped over the sink, spitting out toothpaste.
She’d snarl sometimes while she still could,
and her teeth would clack along the baseboards.

I used to hear her voice everywhere.
I heard it in every song, drifting in from stray conversations,
rising up from the street below.

I’m here. Let me back in.

The last time she was inside,
she lapped at the corners of my mouth
where my strength dribbled out.

She can’t get that close anymore.
I won’t let her in.

Sometimes I hear her scratching at the door.
Her fingers have grown too short to suck on now.

She didn’t know she was a vampire.
On the last day, before everything crumbled,
she buttoned down her shirt and combed her hair back,
took a drag on one last cigarette and said, “I know what I’m doing, stop fussing.”

But she was wrong.

She’s sitting outside, even now,
broken teeth gnawing at the doorframe,
held back by the cloves of garlic on my counter,
and my unwillingness to invite her in again.

She can’t ask me to.
Not anymore, anyway.
She doesn’t have a throat.

She is colourless, translucent,
and I walk through her sometimes without noticing.

Her lips are cold, they say, but I can’t feel them anymore.

I turn a page, write some notes, hum along with the radio,
and sometimes I notice a cold smell from the door,
and hear that small scratch.

It’s all that’s left of her.

It’s a request. An apology, maybe.
It’s hard to tell.
Even the memory of her is bleached clean in the sunshine
like an old bone.