Weeks in the hospital, without perfume, or candy,
and I still have no friends. Yesterday, a man
came over to me and screamed about the accident,
the blood! I shrank, smaller, into my sweater
and imagined I was somewhere else. The women in the
restaurant smile when I take their pictures
with a pink Instamatic and offer them
spoonfuls of chocolate, my number. I am staring
at the telephone now, willing it to ring, cradling it in my
arms and my stomach is turning. I beat myself
with my fists, my loneliness is relentless. I see its constancy
in the spreading bruises, the green and yellow echoes.
I am the quietest object here, I could rest here always, never moving.
(lynn crosbie - skirt, my pretty name (r.))
