Inescapable

Should I ever lose
the sense of inference --

but it's been shifted
away

long ago
I had the sense of seemingness

trundled away
while my senses reeled

my high heel
snapped

me into traffic
the car lunged

at me
and stopped --

I limped away

unbelieving

Food Court

Little things set me off.
My mother throwing away the string beans
she couldn't finish at dinner.

I didn't grow up during the Great Depression
as she did
but I was felled by a great depression years ago
and had to live off welfare and food stamps.

The psychiatrist I was seeing told me my mother
didn't have to work when I was a child,
implying that she shouldn't have.

I immediately repeated this to my mother
and she denied the accusation,
insisting that she had to work, that there
were times during my infancy when our refrigerator
was almost empty.

I think I've always lived with these stringencies,
these uncertainties.
They bind me to the essential.
They form the fiber of my being, the string from which
I dangle

©Rochelle Hope Mehr