Living Next Door to Wendy

All the years I lived next door to Wendy
her window screens always played 
reruns of Happy Days
bearing her burden behind closed doors
bathed in the salt of unshed tears
never looking beyond the ring.

But love found her anyway
and she doesn’t know how, or why,
only that it helps her to survive,
and if the townsfolk in their Sunday best
only knew, they’d be the first to cast stones
while they whitewashed their own imperfections

Because she loves a man who calls her Beauty
and loves her back with all his heart and soul,
but she lives with one who thinks a band of gold
is license to treat her like something he owns,
securely kept from the rest of the world
pressed against the bottom of his shoe.



september 2006
Janet Reid





Awarded by Poetic Constellations