The Truth Has Scars and Needs a Coat of Paint He has a personality the size of mainland China. A heart twice that size, if either could be quantified. Everyone he knows loves him except the one he loves the most. She tells her friends, "Why would I love him? Look how much he does for me now. How could he do more?" Each day he wakes up dreaming she'll return. Each night he knows his dream has not come true. He hopes for better the next morning. His friends don't want to say anything. They know that if they did he would be sad. The truth has scars and needs a coat of paint. Why won't anyone do something? They've all learned to tell themselves, "He has to want this change of heart; we can't do it for him." Same convenient excuse for those who face a drunk and lack the courage to confront. Convenience and comfort keep the world complicit. One morning on a whim he glances in the mirror and recognizes a young face hidden behind the wiser eyes. He feels the urge to protect that child and learns he is inside him. The child begins to cry. The man he has become decides to rescue that innocent smile and polish it to match this moment. He leaves the house, and people notice a different expression in his eyes. Freed of shackles, freed of myth, as if a rehearsal for another life, the same life that he almost lost. He stops dreaming and begins to forge another dream, a softness, a younger self. A loved one from his heart. Transition She had a Rottweiler aura and a hostile resting face. Arrived late to the virtual meeting and proceeded to declare her territory. Others heard politely and mildly deferentially as she grabbed at what she did not understand. As if by instinct, an unspoken bond was formed among attendees who began to find things to admire in one another. Afternoon, replete with sunlight, overtook accumulating syllables that fell into a distance giving comfort. The center of attention shifted to a shared place where faces progressively read other faces and began to change into a unified resistance to the frightened one hoping to frighten them while gradually becoming irrelevant. Martina Wore Her Oboe Martina wore her oboe. It was her jewelry that set off pale silken fabric that further set off her labored cheeks that puffed out when she played. She expected the antagonistic fibers and the inevitable travails of sewing the reed and winding the red wire to hold it, knowing it would fray within a week. Just like her nerves that knew the drinking habits of her paramour, a lug who failed to bow to woodwinds. She had a trio that rehearsed together and performed beyond the metronome that unified their heartbeats and the fingerings. The man she was supposed to love would count the measures and the moments until cocktail hour that followed her performances. She knew they were not made for each other, nor was she made for the routine that overtook whatever life she might have had. Her Bigness She knew everything about everything and nothing else. She lectured on how to treat succulents and keep them alive. She did not train for marathons but knew all that runners should do. She preferred to stand back and reveal her expertise over taking action. She wanted a promotion and had supporters who saw in her a kindred mediocrity that made them feel safe. She had her windows done, her nails, and she bought shoes because she weighed too much to be stylish. She routinely cheered for dictators, feeling very much in common with their lonely lanes as people undeserving expected help and would not get it. Babysitter Once we were deemed adults, we visited her in the wooded home. She took us to her studio of wool with sections sorted by color and geometry. All those quilts had come from what she had collected here. She was usually hard at work stitching together warmth. Then as if by virtue of a sudden recess, she took out a vast collection of tiny wind-up toys that tocked along and bobbed their heads atop the table. She laughed loudly, revealing at last her favorite recreation. We laughed, too, disbelieving the level of pleasure she derived from hearing the little automatons moving along with no incentive needed, just that burst of battery fuel and her laughter and eye light.
Sheila E. Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Her most recent book is Golden Milk (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020). Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition (Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland), 2018). Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory.