The Sensitivities of a privileged town

Linda would always name the volley of birds that fell from the sky,

The near-death bodies from bridges,

Even knowing that giving them souls would be fatal.

She found, remarkably, that whispers were best heard

In the courtyards between tired dentist buildings

Where Day went to cry himself to sleep,

Crumbling in between cobblestone crevices and potted plants.

Each time Linda witnessed his tears she wondered,

“Why must you cry on your own instead of speaking to the ground, who looks up

to your light?”

And the last bit of day replied,

“Once you find someone other than the naive walls to beguile time, whose past,

present, and future blend, you will understand.”

So she ventured away as dusk awoke, ignoring the walls’ begrudging calls to

remain,

And climbed the fences that once both protected and imprisoned her, twirling

with wind-caught curtains,

Until she became entangled in the fabric-ated dreams, that though wondrous in

the moment proved to be a perilous, ivory mess

That taught her that to be free was to know the feeling of being imprisoned.

Townie talkers heard she heard an alluding rumor

To the thousands of lights the little people strung themselves under

Proof of their worth, they scraped their hands across the ragged arms

sheltering her,

Fingered the oily hair caught between her lips and sighed

Said the town would take her paper feet and sweep them out from under her,

fold her in half until she was forced to tiptoe between the creases

Only then did she realize why Day drowned himself silently, warming the waters

with the gaze of a cornered mouse;

He cleansed himself of the century-old reincarnations of recycled damnations

that tormented him,

Invisible to the eyes of the earth which seemed scarcely able to stare into

his light

Linda knew she had to away with her tears and hide them in the crevices the

people so insisted she held

Within the navy notebook she wore like a weapon, brandished behind and beyond

and never beside because that was all she would allow them to see with their

flashlight eyes; how narrow their vision had ever seemed and ever will seem

As soon as the roads provided a shred of escape, she fled

And found a life in which the birds called her name, yet she could do nothing

but blink back at them.

There was seldom time for secret whispering behind decaying rocks and scraped

walls,

Nor did Day share his warmth as often as he used to, and his tears were

distorted by Linda’s own.

As she tore apart her own soul, Linda dragged herself towards the stones that

had always stood there waiting,

for her.

I want to go back, Linda cried

Oh, but you are too far gone, said the walls

We cannot save you from here to there

Unlike you, we do not have a place in life to move forward.

We will rise with the day and the night will choke us, and the town may not

care

But Linda, you may sell the town a mere, pretty penny and it will relinquish

its memories,

And with those, you can sink your hands into the petty dirt you once called

home.