L'fabuleaux destin d'moi

She was an immutable muttering,
a perpetual prattle tottering by
like a beetle on brittle stilts.

Her t-shirts and citrus-colored jumpers were
murals of quotidian stains,
stretched taut across a tawny tummy filled
with juice and Cherry Mash.

Odd and outre,
she was always glazed
in some sort of whimsy,
and she laughed during uncomfortable silences.

In a room that faced the street
where children's voices flitted by,
and the blur of their bodies
zipped by on bikes or bare feet,

the cantaloupe twilight splashes across her face.
Her eyes grew wide as she watched herself
glide in on slippered feet, her path illumed
in gossamer and violets.

Her cinnamon skin consented to
the gracious curves of her body,
fluid and fulgent as silk.
She was zaftig and rosy,
with a presence like her mother's old stills of Mae West.

Now the neighborhood grows silent
with the sleepy hush of dusk,
and the crickets twitter in the wake
of the children's fading footsteps.

Amber lamplight guides her hands
brushing through her tangled hair,
clammy fingers picking at the knots,

and she tries to count to infinity.