Member-only story
Train
a poem
Tonight I’m lucky; the grocery is full of strangers.|
No one will come up to me and tell me
what they read on my face, force me
into some explanation I’ll have to take home
and watch as it fingers the furniture
and goes through the closets, make its tiny
judgments and then look back at me,
expecting some further justification.
Every day the answering machine informs me
who the world thinks I am, repeating its urgent
messages from people who need more than me.
I listen carefully, knowing there is always the danger
someone will ask me that one unanswerable question
from their safe distance, as if happiness were a dress
I could slip on and fit carefully about my shoulders, stand
before the mirror and turn this way and that, judging
fit and style and appropriateness.
I’ve stopped believing everyone else is right, finished
measuring myself against what I can only imagine.
This time I’m going to be as wrong as only I can be.
I’m going to do it with a flair. Let someone else worry
this time.
