Читать книгу Psalms of the Dining Room - Lauren Schmidt - Страница 8

A teenage girl in too-high heels stamps past a line of cars.

Held by a stop sign, drivers wait for her

patent leather daggers to pass. Her stagger begins

to slow: she knows they cannot go until she’s gone.

She idles in the crosswalk, stages herself before the cars

in a half-deserted plea to be seen. She needs someone to see her

studded belt, her stockings like an electric fence, the tear

that reveals her knee. She needs someone to see her

hood— trimmed in exhaust-gray faux fur— about to drop

over her face. She needs someone to see the gaze

behind those thick black straps of eye-lining wax,

streaks like tire tracks of a garbage truck that motor over her

soft and seamless blue, someone to see the beauty

of her rouge-ruined cheeks. Instead, the cars see her

lips bust up with Fuck you! from some mucked up misery,

mixed inside then spewing out. She turns on her toes

with a told-them-so swiftness and off slips her shoe.