Gotta Testify
Anne is ok. She is decent and well liked. Well, no one exactly loves her especially, but she has never been in a quarrel and no one wants to quarrel with her. She works the morning shift at the downtown hospital, medical scrubs the color of a faded lily pad. During her lunch break, she obediently follows a fellow coworker, kindly, to hold a sign of protest for her friend’s issue of the week. She’ll protest against ozone policy, for farmers’ rights, against the war: conflicts ongoing, past, or future.
“Do we have to use the word torture,” she asks. “Cause it is just so strong.” Her friend takes the sign back, telling her that she sometimes just doesn’t get it.
On the way back to work, she stops beneath a tree to shuffle crunchy leaves between her fingers. Oblivious to the attention she draws, she abruptly looks up and winks at a man carrying a yellow tricycle. Both are very uncomfortable. Her need to apologize for the reflexive behavior is only overcome by her overwhelming sense of guilt at tardiness. She runs back to work, fifteen minutes early. Her purse remains beneath the tree. No one could say for sure if she left for lunch that day, or any day.
She rewinds a disposal camera beyond any sense of reason, clicking the wheel in reverse for the half mile walk to the photo store on her way home. The clerk has his fun, “that can ruin the camera, if you keep it up.” The response on her shocked face releases a chemical in his stomach; it makes him sick. He knows, however, that he’ll never be capable of resisting similar pranks the next time she comes in. No one can. Some people are targets.
At home, she sprinkles baby powder into her shoes, for luck or hope. She checks her answering machine. She inspects the difference gravity has made in the arrangement of her shower towel. She knows dust has had its way on her plants today. She concludes that, indeed, “torture was far too strong a word. Nobody intentionally harms another.” She makes a note on her planner, “Nobody Harms On Purpose.” Finally, she notes her need for a large roll of stamps.
Each woman who enters your life lives and dies. Like water vapor that coalesces and crystallizes into a snowflake, falls to earth to land on a lamppost, and then melts back to a lesser state, so goes the arc of she.
And she was a killer fuck.
“Do we have to use the word torture,” she asks. “Cause it is just so strong.” Her friend takes the sign back, telling her that she sometimes just doesn’t get it.
On the way back to work, she stops beneath a tree to shuffle crunchy leaves between her fingers. Oblivious to the attention she draws, she abruptly looks up and winks at a man carrying a yellow tricycle. Both are very uncomfortable. Her need to apologize for the reflexive behavior is only overcome by her overwhelming sense of guilt at tardiness. She runs back to work, fifteen minutes early. Her purse remains beneath the tree. No one could say for sure if she left for lunch that day, or any day.
She rewinds a disposal camera beyond any sense of reason, clicking the wheel in reverse for the half mile walk to the photo store on her way home. The clerk has his fun, “that can ruin the camera, if you keep it up.” The response on her shocked face releases a chemical in his stomach; it makes him sick. He knows, however, that he’ll never be capable of resisting similar pranks the next time she comes in. No one can. Some people are targets.
At home, she sprinkles baby powder into her shoes, for luck or hope. She checks her answering machine. She inspects the difference gravity has made in the arrangement of her shower towel. She knows dust has had its way on her plants today. She concludes that, indeed, “torture was far too strong a word. Nobody intentionally harms another.” She makes a note on her planner, “Nobody Harms On Purpose.” Finally, she notes her need for a large roll of stamps.
Each woman who enters your life lives and dies. Like water vapor that coalesces and crystallizes into a snowflake, falls to earth to land on a lamppost, and then melts back to a lesser state, so goes the arc of she.
And she was a killer fuck.