Under the Skin
There's a girl—you know the kind,
mousey-small and timid, too,
hides behind books
behind spectacles,
behind a half-smile that
can't hide her
uneven teeth.
You've seen her—
she frequents
libraries, bookstores; she
huddles under lampposts
in the gloom,
trying to catch
one last word
before the bus comes.
She rarely talks, but
you know
the sound of her voice—
quiet, muffled, as though
she can't form
the sentences
that she swallows
down like water.
Her eyes—what liquid
eyes—if only she
would look
into your own. Which one of us
gives thought
to her small stature
once she's passed
and gone
into the night?
Do we wonder
where she sleeps,
what she eats,
who she loves?
No.
She passes and
is past. The girl
walks empty streets
alone
and her feet
often hurt
by the time she
gets home.
She draws a bath,
like any of us might,
and drops her
clothes
onto the tiled floor,
onto the squares
of black and white.
She knows she's
been forgotten—
she knows she's
just another
face and she is
glad of it. Under her hair
there is a clasp,
and alone in
her bath
she
undoes it.
Her skin sloughs off—
she passes it,
dripping
over the porcelain edge
and smiles as
it hits the tiles
with a splash. If we could see her
now,
we would not
look away,
be sated with
the vision of
an ordinary girl.
We might run,
we might then
choose to hide,
faced with a visage
such as hers. Under that fair
and freckled skin
there is a thing
best left
to stories—
old of eye and moist
of scale
and writhing in
the deep and
we should be
the ones to cast
our eyes away
from the face
she has
so carelessly
revealed.
