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JULIE NEEDLER
Stop She does not offer her seat—why should she; it's just a few drops of blood, after all—but he smiles and she smiles and he wipes the blood and there's no way to tell why he's bleeding and he doesn't say why he's bleeding and he lurches backward against my breasts when the bus moves and he gives me the same shy smile and the woman does not look up (her part is done). I rock backward away from him smiling all the while and his body, his skin is so fragile and he holds the tissue in one spotted hand and grips the metal rail on a bus seat with the other one. I get off when the doors open—not an escapist gesture, you understand, merely one of necessity—it was my stop. Last Glance The first thing before the transformation was over A taste of salt on her lips and a heaviness in her limbs which in a brief flash she mistook for grief in those last blurred seconds before they left her silent and marble-white in the glare of the burning city just another afternoon Not like this I didn't think I would leave (you) like this with a fat check in your name and the keys loose on the table |
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© 2005 Underground Voices |
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