
All of them
The girl with Indian eyes, cheekbones you could carve bones with
keeping at bay her true age, she was an enigma, who knew, what stood as
truth and what, fabrication?
The man whose skin wore keloid scars like leopard spots, shone in hairless bald, berated for his soft heart and lack of guile, her other half in male form
The lady with elongation to her soul, her chosen words like prayer, she straightens those who bow to the world in hunched defeat, her strength coming from saving those who are unable to cope as she
in strong upright certainty
The mother, nursing her wounds, stings like an adder, her refusal to explain the cause of her pain, she sharpens instead, the unexpected malice and spits, far and reaching
The father, still playing the field with weary tread, his address book too thick to carry, he remains longing for the girls he didn’t conquer at 20, though they mock him for his thirst and his lupine drool
She knows them all
like reflection they repeat
like a photograph half in, half out
dissolving what is real
she is their friend, they are her stories
but sometimes one climbs off their ship and drowns or throws rocks at her to cast her overboard
she cannot say why
such fickleties exist
but she suspects
in noticing them closely and their histories on repeat
she sets herself apart as the observer
happier tucked watching the sea for land
she has no need to spill her guts or share
her space
she has no need inside her for their chatter and their sea squall
her isolation, her self-sufficiency drives them to
eventual hatred
and like sea birds, hungry in flight, they swoop down and
peck out her eyes
thinking
if she cannot see into her words
she will not write them anymore
and like them
she will need
and cleave
closer
but this is not
what ever happens
from her remote outlook
she knows when the yellow bird is near
her eyes are not made of jewels
they come from ancient sea bed, they are granite
too hard to pierce