Portrait: Woman

I.

Water drips in the kitchen.

She slow-sips ice tea and inhales

deep on the butt-end of a cigarette.

Two fingertips pressed to her lips,

she sucks on slow suicide, counts

her days, square patterns on wall paper

curling and unglued at the edges.

The laundry’s undone, dishes in the sink,

the stinking trash holds scraps,

leftover from last week.

She seeks redemption from the summer heat

sticking to her skin, the sweat of dreams

melting ice cubes in her half-empty glass.

II.

If you bothered to ask, she’d say,

I’m fine, hon’, and light another

cigarette, smoke twisting from the tip,

dispersing into yesterdays.

She unwinds in the hard-back chair,

mumbling prayers at the kitchen table,

its varnish-worn wood, scarred and

scratched, a road map of where she’s been,

its jagged curves and dead-ends.

Was there ever really a choice?

Was the direction of her days hell-bent somehow?

Inevitable marks and roadways upon her skin,

pulling her to this table, to this hot

pressing space where the predictable drip,

drip, drip reminds her of a clock, and

every so often she empties the bucket.

© Ami Mattison, 2011