The Singing

The words, first there were the words.
Slammed about like a game of badminton.
No, not a game— moneyed pain

across her right cheek and spreading:
a half-dollar, the blood of cranberries.

She turned away but it stung already
and she expected it to get worse.
She wouldn’t sing tomorrow.

She envies people as they seem from far away
when the world is fuzzed like week-old bread,
when she can’t tell gray or kind, tall,
splay-toed or cheeky, busy, bald or bawdy.

She isn’t singing now, she’s frightened.
There is not enough space in her bedroom
for all the people that she knows.

How can she sleep with all this noise?
Will her dreams be filled with melancholy?
Will the singing end? She can’t stand that.