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This was going to be published in the second issue of (Floating) World but I decided last minute that I didn’t want it to be. I’d call myself more of a prose writer than a poet, sadly the interweb doesn’t lend itself well to prose formating.

Catherine and the Old Woman

By the time she was twenty-three Catherine could already see the change through her own eyes and it took no time to make that decision. Starting with the first time that she took off her clothes she knew it wasn’t right. Every moment was absorbed with the thought that she overwhelmed, showed too much, was seen from the wrong angle. All those noises were forced, not fake, but not for her either. That started young, and everyone knows that there’s no getting any younger. So when she reached twenty-three she decided to take control.

The operation was painful, and the bottle of white chalky tablets was empty. She kept looking around for something else to relieve the pressure, the pain that was still there.

Now, every night that he reaches for her she closes her eyes and as he disappears in side of her. Her mind goes to the old woman.

The girl sits there while the old woman speaks, upright straight back, chest out, and belly pulled thin. She knows that a clean white smile stretches across her face and she pulls her shoulders back at the thought. Every once and a while her chin tips forward and her eyes gaze down the front of her figure.
The old woman sits hunched with her spine exposed through the thin fabric of an old white t-shirt. Her belly and chest seem to fall into her hips, feeble to their inevitable pull towards the ground. Her face appears deeply etched around the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“I think I saw a ghost that night.” The old woman is telling the girl.
“I saw your grandfather that night” she says. “I heard him. It was so vivid. He woke me up. I got right up. I didn’t have to think. He shouted out like he always does. He needed me.”
The girl reaches out for the old woman’s hand, she pauses and than takes it. She pushes the woman’s exposed veins over the hidden bony surface of the top of her skin.
“When did you start to get these?” she says in a low mumble. The woman continues to talk.
“He used to yell for me. You know how sick he was. I must have heard him that night.”
“There’s so many.”
“I’m old. So I got up and came into here. I went straight to that chair he used to sleep in.”
The girl’s eyes wander across the walls. They stop on a picture of a tall strong looking woman whose face and full lips are dominated by a head of thick black hair.
“There is none of me in there,” she says.
“When I got out here I just stared at the chair and tried to figure it out.”
The girl stares at the picture, then back at the woman, then at the picture again. Her head rotates back and forth. She misses every word of the story. There is no resemblance! Where has that woman gone?! For fine soft skin she now has scales! For long silken hair she now has straw! For soft childish hands she now has claws! She drones on.
“Then I remembered, I had to tell myself, ‘He’s not here Josephine’ I said. I had to say it out loud.”
This woman is at least a head shorten than the beauty in the photos. The girl’s eyes are fixed on her hand, the one that covers the top of the woman’s. Her vision swims. She feels a single sensation of one rock forward, one back. As she stares, her fingers begin to curl and the color of her nails distorts. She watches and cannot pull her eyes away as her hand becomes lost in that of the old woman.

The boy next to Catherine shifts in the bed. Her right side aches in the cold. She is awake and gets up to find the bathroom.

She explained her decision to her friends this way. “A big chest seems to be a huge factor in our makeup of society these days—to get through doors, or get things open, or get paid, really.” She remembers she tilted her head while she said that last part. “You would buy a nice new suit for that job interview or a dress for your date wouldn’t you? Why not make it something permanent?”

Catherine walks naked down the hall, her back stiff and hunched over. She realizes she almost hugs her abdomen in an attempt to ward off chills. As she reaches the bathroom the lights come on.

There she is in the mirror. There is a scream that pushes through it all. Out in the warmth of the bedroom the boy shoots straight up in bed. It is not the upright, straight back, chest out, belly pulled thin, Catherine with her permanent change that stares back at her. No, there it is. Catherine feels her insides turn and she falls over the sink, her throat is sour and her chest heaves. It is the exposed spine, etched skin, and weary breasts of the old woman that fixes her gaze in the glass of the mirror.