Barbra Nightingale • Spring Fever

Miranda looks in the mirror,
hears voices from the other side.
There are new lines, bumps, blotches
she thought she'd left behind.
There is much she wants to say,
but they are too loud; she can't
be heard above the din.

It is raining a hard rain.
The drops beat on the window
like bullets; a sound of breaking glass.
The world is full of shards,
she thinks, sharp slivers
that find their way home:
a glass eye, transparent heart.

She begins to argue with shadows,
takes umbrage with incivilities,
wonders if she's lost her mind.
I still want to know why, she insists,
we don't just fall off the planet?
Though even she will admit
there's much to weigh us down.

She is beginning to forget to remember;
the flecks in her eyes harder to see,
the music slower and all without words.
There's so much to do, she says,
if she only knew what.
She opens the door and steam pours out;
voices fall like clean, March rain.