The Shape that Continues
By Rachel Finkelstein


Walls won’t talk, they
listen. You’re the fifth

woman who cried in
this stall this morning.

Walls will look at you
with fat, hissing eyes

the overhead yoke of the
light yellowing their lust

what are you doing here

You say
you had
                    (an accent)

had never heard darlin’
the way he said it

you’d never meant to
leave that very green

summer, it’s breath
made an extra ear for

listening as you melted into
bones thin and stretchy as

dough, your dogwood years,
your Missouri, a state

undetectable. When he asked
if the birth mark underneath

your knee was really a tattoo
of numbers, he was asking

if you had been wanted. Like the
plastic pink flamingo beside the

white mailbox, the yard
with its clothesline fences

the dog
with the half-jaw.

That day off of I-44
all three of the toilets broken
the women standing in line

the water that refused to turn
around and run the other way

how you watched
           (your body happening)

as you ran, toilet paper streaming
at the heel of your shoe.

© 2010 prickofthespindle.com