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Chilled as her own suffering, she feasted black and
empty...

A girl on a tall stool sits at a high counter,
puts $3.50 on the table for a chocolate milkshake.
It's black, in a swelling Coke glass.
Her hair is dark, so dark it ought to have been dyed,
her skin is fair on the edge of ice.
She lowers her lips to the straw,
   drinks.
     You know
     she is drinking the thick liquid,
     up from the depths of the cup,

     through the white plastic tube,
     between her pale lips,
     over her warm narrow tongue,
     sliding cold and viscous, down her throat.
You watch.
She draws a deep sip and thins,
up from the depths of her soul.
She sits more lightly, now.
You cannot see, but she is hollow,
hollowing out from the inside.
Her skin grows darkly translucent,
like glass - or ice,
   as if she is melting from the inside,
   hovering above a candle as it illuminates.
She is drawn from pale to colorless.
The back of her hair peeks through her forehead,
and then - the glowing neon sign, backwards in the window behind her.
Yes, we're open.
Like a soap bubble, she grows thin,
the reflected light moves,
neon and stars and streetlights,
swirls to a surface of dotted lines,
and with one last sip (an inaudible "pop"),
she is gone.
   You walk up to the counter.

   $3.50 lying on the table,
   three ones and two quarters.
   The glass is empty, 
   except for a ring of milk around the bottom of the cup,
   and frost that melts when you pick it up.
Don't taste.
It smells of molasses and vinegar, under the chocolate.
You pay your own bill, tip the waitress,
walk out of the diner, 
drive out onto the dark highway, hours towards home.