Autumn Leaves

(A Selection of Anonymous Poetry)
 

Girl Behind the Glass

You sit in the wooden rocking chair
Trembling hands folded over your bloated stomach
An old blue shawl wrapped around your shoulders

Your swollen feet stretch the purple wool slippers 
You knit last winter
With twisted fingers and size 10 needles

I watch as you stare through cataracts
at the black and white framed image
of a smiling child
in a sandbox

Your thin mouth slightly pursed
the red of your lipstick riding up 
between the cracks above your upper lip.
You squint through milky eyes
rimmed by white lashes

Remembering
or imagining

Bits of sand in your fine golden hair
Or the soft touch of your fingers in warm mud
Dark streaks marking the passage 
of a soiled hand across your freckled face

You move forward
A wrinkled finger shaking
As though to point to the girl
behind the glass

As though you suddenly recognize her
Need her
To breathe
To smell the tea 
I have placed before you
In an old china teacup
Chipped, with painted daisies


 
 
 
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