A woman on the street was circling, circling
her shoulder bag dropped down around her waist
she had spittle on her mouth
a frail and old person
scraggly white hair, a stained windcheater
broken,
and yet I was too afraid to help
bad possibilities zinging through my mind
of being hit, attacked, screeched at, misunderstood
at the heaviness of a human body collapsing on me in relief
the time it might suck from me
I walked by
with tears in my eyes.
doesn’t absolve anything
lazy coward me
she stopped circling, the spell broken
by me?
no way to know how the light gets in to a fissured mind
I told a friend later and got upset again
silly, scared me
still hoping for absolution
which she gave
‘you’re a kind person for even noticing. You wouldn’t be crying now if you didn’t mean well’
but I didn’t care enough
I could have given her a tissue to wipe her face
‘did you even have a tissue? I bet you didn’t even have one on you’
I just shook my head and sighed
the secret shame of soft, 3-ply folds in my bag,
putting me to the lie
knowing they were there all along
just like
the least I could have done
was
offer her one
Off-prompt for the penultimate day of NaPoWriMo!
clairevetica 