Thirteen year old, Thelma Jenkins,
thrust her hands deep into her pockets
and found a dusty paper clip.
Then with a twist and a turn she made
a hook and attached it to a piece
of line she found wrapped
around the railing at the end of the pier.
Things aren’t what they seem.
She scratched the sores between her
fingers, then rubbed her belly to soothe
the ache, soured from the smell
of soiled diapers and rotten food,
spilling from the overturned trash cans.
A sea gull took aim, but missed.
Life is out to get me.
She noticed a fish head lodged between
the wooden slats of a bench. “Sorry Mr. Fish,”
she said, then pushed the hook through its eye socket.
It made her think of the aristocrats who lost
their heads during the French revolution.
Things could be worse.
Lowering her bait, the grotesque head,
bobbed up and down in the waves.
It reminded her of Mr. Stokes,
her old math teacher.
“Now Miss Jenkins,”
she heard him say, “show us
the circumference of this circle?”
Life used to be normal.
Shielding the sun from her freckled face,
her stomach growled, and in a little while
she felt a tug at the end of her line,
and there it was, fighting for its life,
dinner for one if she could pull it in.
Things will get better.
No comments:
Post a Comment