The look that a woman or girl

The look that a woman or girl reserves

for a prettier woman or girl. It is

in part resentful, in part--her darting

eyes--full of pity and need, of a glancing

feeling of sympathy pains at pinched

toes, at arms and shoulders exposed

to the prickling air, of flush at pluck

of hair (her eyebrows and who knows?).

The one--as they say, as she may have been told--

is mousy and must seem dutiful: merely

dressed, not adorned, and dully colored,

she is used to standing out only when not so many

others are around. The other is strawberry

blonde and hungrily thin; she is clothed

much closer in, and shows much more

of her pale and prickling skin. She does not

wobble on her heels, however improbably

high. But she is not less dutiful.

The one is looking; the other is listening

in, to the thinned and darkened voice

of an older woman nearby: she used

to smoke, and still she wishes to smolder,

with makeup stark and clear. But it is

not bright: like her eyes--well past resentful--

and the heatworn russet of her hair, the color

of heatwoven corn. (And if you husked:

the stretched and restitched skin that barely

covers the skull, the cottony tufts

of the will, desire worn thin, rewashed,

and worn again.) The look that a woman

or girl reserves at what she feels is the end.

(Begun 28 April 2011, edited 2 May 2011. From life or what has been made, not asked, to pass for it.)