Monday, January 16, 2017

Butterfly Doors

It’s all business in the left hand lane.
People hurry to the next room where
they will sit or stand, perhaps eat
and have some coffee sweats.

They could talk or they may
just stand and stare out a dirty window,
cry at the sight of an old woman
shuffling, hobbled at a purely
perfect slightly obtuse angle
holding tightly to the bags wrapped
twice around her wrists.

Don’t tap the brakes when
there are cars behind you,
don’t feel nervous when you
need to execute a right hand turn
and merge into the flow that’s
what driving instructors will tell
shaky teenagers who pretend
to not notice or be concerned
that they could kill someone
with the metal machine
completely encasing them.

10 and 2 isn’t natural, but
neither is dying
your hair the
color of your grandmothers’.
Silver gray white, so bright
your mother has to squint
when you
go to visit her and help
sort through the hospital
bills piled ceremoniously
as a center piece
on the coffee table.
Light reading. A
table she inherited from a
woman she never even met
on her now deceased
husband’s side of the family.

She looks away,
looks at the closed curtains.
She stays in the middle lane
when she drives you home.

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