haibun || Sheila E. Murphy

She plants herself where she will never grow. From where she can
insist from a cappella stance the many objects she desires, and all her
offspring can be put to use. She watches everyone's development
come to a halt. She virtuosically complains that everyone who's doing
thing things is or has offended her. She is a ritual, an albatross,
a catch-all sadness lodged in human form. A purgatorial particular.
She ruins hours, days, and weekends, martyring the psyche she has
held while dragging disappointment to all locales her body reaches.
When possible she holds still in the car, sends someone in
to fetch what has inspired the drive across geography. She looks out
of cruel eyes to discover what is wrong in everybody else. There is no
verb behind her skin. Merely insouciance where passion might have
lived. A safety valve protects her disapproving way of thinking, feeling,
recollecting where adventure might hve pressed ahead into the lovely wind.
Perfunctory displeasure catches whom she knows and can infect.
Inflections do not show, they yield to meciocrity. She reveres what does
not challenge. She sleeps before her intimate tv.

Graying atmosphere, spun stories, cleats untied against the wall, a tainted
chaperone

Sheila E. Murphy