In the morning, she dresses herself in layers:
yesterday eyes, with tomorrow’s dress and a voice
borrowed from the girl on the corner, who sells flowers
and nightly dreams of Eden.
As she walks to work,
she catches a glimpse of that girl in a puddle
and smiles her newsreader smile – just enough
to make the corners of her lips go numb.
All day she sits inside another’s life, adopting
the quick hand-gestures of the manager
and the brusque goodbye of a check-out clerk;
curls her hair around one finger like the waitress
in a downtown café. While she waits for her meal to arrive,
she blows across her lunchtime coffee the way her father used to:
because sometimes its enough just to remember him.
And at times like this, collecting tokens of the passers-by,
recording their daily minutiae like someone who cares,
she feels powerful. It doesn’t matter that tomorrow,
she’ll walk a different way home, or that tomorrow she will
never see them again.
