Skip to main content

Six Figure Salary

On the train the worst and best place
to sit is the back (or maybe the front,
if you're one of those people who like
to have their noses in every conversation).

Lucille's exhaustion billows in violet
clouds around her shoulders, turns out
that coffee is less efficient than blood
when it comes to the arteries.

In front there are backs of heads
bald ones, dark ones, pale ones, heads that
bob, heads that slant to one side, heads
pushed together as if they were holding hands.

This is the life, they had all said,
back in the days when blinking was for the eyes
and not the head. She is the wielder of the
Six Figure Salary, the sharpest sword of them all, yes?

Somewhere in the fringe of her memories
there exists the weighty flightiness of wishes half
borne into dreams; No, Rob, she hisses, you
cannot leave the kids at home to go to the pub.

If Lucille squints the heads merge into one messy
cloud--she rubs her eyes, lately it is becoming difficult
to distinguish between eyes and noses, ears and mouths,
she sees them transparent within all those backs of heads.

It would not occur to her that Rob too had emptied
his hidden alleys and wistful pockets for the sake of Life.
How much of themselves would they keep giving
to reality before they distorted out of recognition?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unburdening

Too many things lie between us, quivering, quaking in darkness like silence, or a laugh being shoved back down your throat. I press my cheek against the top of your head, your hair burning with the fidgeting fingers of the sun, listening to words that have no shape, or sound, or feel, just words that sit like fat potatoes between me and you, words that build up like gum under school desks and surround you. Tendrils, thin wispy letters, dig their way through your skin, overgrown bean plants. Everytime I try to pull one down, they rip at your skin and you cry out. Your silence floats like a feather, suspended below my mouth; when I speak it flutters with the fluctuations of my voice. Too many things hold us at a distance, two lone figures across each other, toes at the edge of a seemingly uncrossable gap. I heave stones into the darkness, my hand tight around yours, placing trust and love and faith and understanding like stepst...
Post a Comment
Read more

After You

we buried the treasure box together- two dusty heads bobbing in the dirt hands scratching at earth and grime-caked nails, one for one and two for two: forgetting which fingers belonged to me shiny faces watching earnestly as the metal box slowly disappeared- rocks and grit skittering across the surface- you grabbed my hand and I touched the oozing soil around our treasure, the easy product of a six year old girl and boy who swore forever and ever * turning it over so that every scratched scar matches the wrinkles etched in my palms, not a more perfect fit than the way tears mold themselves to the withered lines down  my cheek alone I stand amid fresh laid earth I think to sit and tumble to knees hands catching fingers sinking nails deep- begin to claw through the tears until the treasure box falls deep within the tomb alone, one not two, sweeping dust over the metal lid- crooked back and withered frame time lost but time lost wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Daydream

Back of the classroom is a shadowy place, flickering edges and flimsy images- one, two, three, four, gone again. Five, six, seven, eight, fingers digging deeper, harder, tracing angelically- angel’s bruises. Chanting, what you don’t know will never hurt you, what you know stays forever, a lie, a fat, goose plump lie A hundred ways to say NO gather force, while fingers press harshly, rib after rib.
Post a Comment
Read more