b a r b a r a  f l e t c h e r: other poems


Narrowed

Her reflection in the bus window
makes her face appear thinner,
stripped of adult overindulgence.
Childhood exfoliated.
She is sleeker, perhaps even gaunt.
More will slide off her now, slip
down her cheeks, drip down her chin.
Even her wide round eyes have narrowed,
lips have thinned to small pink lines
that curve neither upward or downward.
And that coffee-table scar
above her left eye has almost disappeared:
a distant memory of skin.