“Sleep like a glove hand, covers our eyes.”

Inspired by Kate Tempest

Tabitha sits on a metal bench beneath an oak tree, somewhere uptown, between one and one hundred. The winter’s breeze seeps beneath cinnamon curls, unraveling momentary microcosms of a life limp from a world boiling. Winter is warm, she thinks, is winter still called the same thing when the preconception of it hesitates at the very thought? Audible now, she sounds the same as riff raff ranting to themselves as they walk block to block begging for some sympathy. She always offers it up too. A left pocket of loose change bangs against her leg, enough in there to cause a bruise. Legs crossed and palms open, tokens spill between space in her fingers. A piper of the midday hustle. If anyone dare disrupt her, x ray eyes staring holes in cars and folks without malicious intention. It’s her natural resting position. Focused on nothing in particular with the exception of an ever-struggle prevention to never think of nothing. The whites of her eye balls are 8 ½ by 11 pieces of paper, perpetually blank beneath the invisible ink of her perception. She dots a proverbial period in her unfurling scroll. When instead of writing the next line in her magnum opus, she gathers four quarters between her thumb and fore finger. Dumb luck would have it that this man needed just one more dollar to score a scratch off to go along with his ketchup packets and french fries he is having for lunch. She is not an overseer of fire breathers, it is up to them to decide what they do with her change. Whenever a thank you follows their transactions, a hollowness escapes down the closest sewer grate and most criticism disappears on its way to the treatment plant along with the rest of judgement and greed and hatred for the different and so called lesser. 

There is no space in a beautiful mind for criticism of nightwalkers, right talkers, and synthesizers. She would never admit this though. Self conscious to a fault and awareness like a super power, thinking thoughts like a Droste until they meta multiply. And she cowers, beneath the weight of a society that constantly shows it’s mistakes. Observations from a still position, give light to all her criticisms; those in three piece suits are passing others who need to dig in trash bins. 

She does plenty to help – compared to those around. her. Scared that nothing will ever be enough to provide some pleasure. Or relief from the constant thought of making choices that will ultimately lead to demise and quiet voices. But ceremony is also a possibility with one way of thinking and that is as follows: When the phrase ignorance is bliss is tattooed on everything above street level, it means that the cries of those in need become ultimately hollow. 

A truck in the distance shifts to reverse, triggers her internal alarm that her lunch break is coming to a close. 

She blinks in slow motion to multiply time that is hers and the city’s. Processing choices she’s made for herself. Like, Do I need to wear a size down to get a promotion? or sometimes the notion of me not coming home until the light is no longer nature’s but city’s grid makes me sick to my stomach. Stunning in a vacuum; where her organs and esophagus mimic choruses of a brain paining to replace her long legs and kemp hair. 

Sipping coffee the same color as her nail polish today. She laughs internally at her own cliche, as the passing buses dry them slowly.      

She toils early to late at a studio, placing monetary numbers on other’s creations as she patiently waits for a moment to take a breath and process her own endeavors. Bars written on bars, sheet music filled with words flapping like a lizard tongue, blank pages still to come, concentrate too hard on the next one, the next one, the one. Sing sick sequences of giving ten pence to a beggar dressed like a dream maker that gives back double what is given them. This is the place she lives in but does not believe in.  

What about the new shoes she bought last weekend? Regret heavy as the weight she puts in them. She takes so much credence in exclusively thrifting but impulsive nature got the best of her. Deciding to gift herself a bit for momentary pleasure and they look great too. Treating self like the needy,  seeking a reason to spend what she “earns” on the daily. 

What of it matters though, concerned with bigger ideas and impact, coming from the stereo. Nodding head in (some) agreement, but more to the beat of the sympathetic season that kills and births in weekends. Life, death, life, death, is such the sickly pleasure of a universal pattern.  It’ll be rainy soon and her wool top will be covered with nylon. Covering up the crochet sweater that her late grandmother made her.         

A poet and writer, but most of all a fighter. From a single family household sold to the make bank rolls. The corporate magistrate took from a women working a job in the sun and school under the florescent lights of practicality and tuition. She watches her brothers, even still, until they slumber, while Mom’s downstairs figuring out the next payments. They live thirty miles east, over a bridge and byways, thinking on the drive if they will be alright without me. Mom never takes her money; no matter how many times she offers up to pay for anything even if it means they will turn off her electricity. Refuses with a kiss and back to steam over the tea pot. Takes two cups from the cupboard, chipped revealing character (a representation of the family), and a spoon to stir. They sit over a game of scrabble, three syllables or more, brilliance passed down from generations ahead of her. Can’t think too much of her upbringing, growth looks so damn appealing. Digging deeper is a shiftless act belonging to the reaper.     

Happy in glimpses, but more than she admits it. Thinking thoughts in observations, staying patient as she waits. Until the next time she is called to do the deeds of human beings.