This Night Has Opened Her Eyes
Posted by Lauren Yates | Filed under Poetry, Print
“She could have been a poet or she could have been a fool,”
she sings to herself, aware she’s both. It’s as natural to her as the runs
in her stockings. There’s no need to varnish the inevitable. She piles
her hair into acceptable disaster, ignoring her black roots.
She had dyed her hair burgundy. No one believed
it was natural, so she has nothing to lose. She pulls on her geisha
T-shirt. The one where she leans over turntables, arms covered in tattoos. The geisha,
that is, not the girl. Though she does want sleeves someday, the day she fools
herself into thinking she’s willing to spend the money. I can’t believe
people pay for pain, she ponders. Thoughts run through
her head of justice and her drama teacher’s kid sister. She wore overalls and had black roots.
She’s probably married now, dreams on hold, sorting through piles
of laundry. Maybe she thinks back to a past that didn’t involve compromise or piles
of clothes to hand-wash. She’ll find lipstick on her husband’s collar, red like a geisha’s.
Everything jerks. The girl barely remembers how she got on this train or scrolled to The Roots
on her iPod full of songs and the cough syrup she knocked over on her nightstand. Foolish
of her not to stand the bottle up once she noticed it had fallen. She runs
through songs on shuffle. Some remind her of him, none remind her of her. It’s unbelievable
how many songs have swearing. In high school, she wrote a “This I Believe” essay
supporting edited music. Why pay more to buy music how it’s marketed to you? People pile
onto the train. A woman steps into a puddle of spilled coffee. It runs
across the floor beneath the seats, milky, but no one’s crying. A man eyes the geisha
on her shirt, or rather, her breasts. The girl’s, that is. She folds her arms, wishing this fool
wouldn’t ogle her so shamelessly. He averts his eyes to the map of the train’s routes.
Strange people take public transportation. Like the woman quoting Roots
who says she knows her Malcolm X, eyes desperate with doubt, like she can’t believe
in sound advice. Like the boy who thought the girl had fooled him.
In Biology class, she told him lobsters scream as they die before diners pile butter sauce
onto their tender flesh. He said he wouldn’t fall for such a “gay” lie.
Words like “blatant” are above his reading level. He writes in run-ons
and is the type to leave his car windows up during a tornado. So she ran with it—
too exhausted to protest, too naïve to be offended. She prefers root canals
to confrontation and ideas to people, but loves aesthetics most and wants the geisha
to exist. She’s not sure whether she wants to look like her or be with her, but she believes
she’ll meet the person who’ll make her trust in love. She piles off the train
two stops too late. It’s the third time this week. She doesn’t know who she’s fooling.
She’ll never be served runny eggs in bed by a hip-hop loving geisha,
her foolish heart will never find the one—it will settle, only to grow like roots anchored into soil.
She’ll compile a list of ways to happy, but won’t believe enough to try.
One Response to “This Night Has Opened Her Eyes”
-
Marion Smallwood Says:
May 31st, 2010 at 5:05 pmbeautiful and honest. very real. i really like it a lot, lauren.
