Why do that to yourself?
Play around with perfection,
even if it was only skin deep,
and the smoothness of these curves
turned your stomach at night,
when dusk settles its hands
either side of your hips,
presses into the grooves
where his tools worked you
into beauty.
Mounted you his sculpture
for all men to see.
Do you not appreciate how
his love made you
into a woman worth seeing?
She call them lollygagger,
adjusted the folds of her scarf,
let them watch her fingers
trace the sweep of her collarbone
like a wink
but not an invitation.
Clutched at the other hand
with smaller, damp digits
unsure eyes flickered from her
to the jackal-backed boys
circling their cigarettes,
tongues dragging across their teeth.
Nothing to be afraid of dear.
One of the men lifted his head
and looked at me
as we sloped past the ash fields,
and rows of toilers
like grey bamboo canes
if bamboo was stooped and bent
with brittle hands knuckle white
against the plastic handled hoes.
Her hands, smaller, firmer, sure,
came down on my shoulders
shadowed his face with fear.
An explanation in a classroom
pretending it isn’t an excuse
claims to be progress,
claims to be a new world
built on the broken bones
of the last.
Mothers scream during childbirth.
There is blood and pain
and sometimes
death.
We are lucky we are not all toiling.
If the old world had their way
who knows what would have happened?
We are smarter these days
we can laugh at the facts
that shattered when the world changed.
Who know what will happen
at the next night rise.
Stung between garden fences
twilight coaxed you outside,
to the square of wilding lawn
uncut from summer’s end,
the coils of wood smoke
streaked with petrol
rising above an evening glow
of light behind closed panes
as one by one they too
flickered out.
Image by Giani Pralea from Pixabay
You.
It’s burnt into my memory
that open mouthed gape
swallowing my words,
and the back turned
mid-sentence on an answer
to a question you had asked
only for the slow spin,
arm triangled over your head
as you scratched your scalp,
and those frown scrunched nostrils
somehow still flared
in a state of confusion
when I refused to speak
to a man not facing me.
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay
Carol J Forrester 
You must be logged in to post a comment.