Every night
The ghosts
Crash my couch
Reminding me
Once I had 99 balloons
But now I’m left clinging to cut strings
And only my dreams are red

Each mourning
I am greeted
By the same lone magpie
Numbering the dead
And all the talking heads
Drone on and on and on
Same as it ever was…

Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have been published in over eighty online journals and print anthologies such as Every Day Fiction, Ab Terra Flash Fiction, Grey Sparrow Journal, High Shelf, Tofu Ink Arts Press, The Fib Review, Wales Haiku Journal, Shot Glass Journal, and Hole in the Head Review. Adele has recently been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize for poetry, the Staunch Prize for flash fiction, and her novella-in-flash, A History of Hand Thrown Walls was shortlisted in Reflex Press Novella Contest.