I never understood those lines about the naked woman on the roof:
roofs are already perfectly frightening
without adding nudity to the equation.
Not that I’m scared
of nudity
per se
but
the thought
of falling off a roof naked and breaking my neck and dying and then someone finding my
sad
naked
body
I bet
they won’t even notice my newly triangulated neck.
If it’s been long enough
since I
fell off that roof and died–
maybe I fell into a bush?
a short tree?
Maybe I died alone because I
was a hermit?
shunned my friends and family?
they shunned me?
But if
it’s been long enough
whoever finds me will be too busy absorbing my rotten flesh
to look at my broken neck.
And if they find me – my body; what’s the difference? –
if they find me soon enough,
when I’ll look just like me now except naked and bruised and broken and dead
they’ll probably be too busy looking at my not-slender thighs and my untoned stomach and
some part of them will be too busy thinking
She should’ve known not to die naked with a body like that
to take in my mangled neck.
Or maybe that would just be my own ghost
frowning down at my bare skin.

Like a nightmare about
forgetting your pants and
a nightmare about falling and
not stopping
crushed together,
like a too-tight handful of pomegranate seeds.
That’s what’s scary about being naked on a roof.