Nobody notices trembling hands if you sit on them

Resembling keen school child, leaning slightly forward

Her tongue on the roof of her mouth to stop hiccups

Watching herself from grimy ceiling

Noticing how maddeningly, acoustic pebbles collect dust

Much like herself, no matter how viciously she washes

Stains permeate over time, ever deeper, closing on permanence

Palmolive soap, a fetter; nausea, her first swallow

Women at her church ask why her knuckles are so swollen

“Why, from ramming my fist down my throat, of course,” she never replies

A man once accused her of fucking with her eyes, so she

Does it every day now because it seems powerful, compared to anything else she’s got

Children can cry until they’re beat red and in an instant be well again

With the proffer of ice cream; she wishes she possessed that chameleon

Mask capable of switching off hubris and becoming steam

If she was, she’d evaporate, ah yes, just like that

Carbon into heated air, into brine, ocean, primordia

Careful not to bleed her lipstick into those fine puckered lines

Fanning her mouth in fatal croquette, loosening her curls

She is finally camera ready; a shining specimen of her sex

The weight of years leach pigment, gas has no color, an odor

Just enough to be unsettling she decides, as careful

Not to spoil her freshly sprayed varnish

She places her tired head inside clean scrubbed oven

To play a favorite song

In the ballroom of her mind.