They hated her for her thin waist & long hair

they loved her for her big heart and wide laugh

ultimately they didn’t care

like a marble has two sides

stare long enough & they merge

one color, one way, or no way

she couldn’t figure people out

not ever, not even

it helped her empathize with others

who scratched their heads when attempting

to fathom the complexity of social interaction

she’d spent her life trying, to no avail

now as an adult on the wrong side of some

manufactured expiry date, it was exhausted;

all the years of effort she’d put in

futile with what she’d received back

indifference usually, indifference is the real

bed fellow of diminishment, a harsher sentence

than hatred, commanding less attention

like the entire world had ‘someone’

& she was forever looking in from the outside

that’s how she felt at 5 & how she felt now

it got old quickly, that feeling, suffocating

a desire for better times when she already

knew dreams were recycled plastic

all the people she’d lost representing

half the glass emptied; all those

who didn’t want to know her

the empty part of the same glass

either way she looked at it

the glass wasn’t half full

& she wasn’t thirsty anymore

just tired of trying, it felt like

attempting to walk a tight-rope

or do algebra having failed simple math

once there seemed to be a way in

if she just hustled

now she knew the key wasn’t around her

neck it was in her mouth, swallowed

the metal of it burned her stomach

with a sour, empty feeling.

She was no magician’s assistant

she was the rabbit pulled from velvet hat

under the hot spotlights of make-believe

illusion is all about misdirection

turn the lights low, then all the way up

blind the audience

before they see the foil.