by Susan
Fox
You live in
a fine house.
Your
friends are as frequent as the stars,
and your
lovers all desire you.
But your
dog is lonely and neglected
like the
person you used to be.
Now the
beer flows freely
and it’s
good times every night;
the party
runs late,
then the
jokes are put on ice.
In the
early hours of the morning
when others
go home laughing,
you are
alone,
standing
naked on the balcony,
wrapped in
a blanket and weeping
into the
dawn and melting snow.
The
television is your closest friend.
It is the
closet you hide in
and it
talks to you
like nobody
else can.
It tells
you what you want to hear:
that your
face is beautiful,
your lovers
all require you,
and the
years will never overwhelm you.
It substitutes
for dreams,
buries old
emotion
and turns
reality into black and white.
I sometimes
creep down the stairs
to watch
you sleeping by the television.
You are
always lying close to it,
and your
face – a mirror of everything you see –
reflects
nothing, but its flashing edge.
Outside the
world explodes in color,
the spring
is celebrated in the song of birds,
and the air
is chilled like fine wine.
But you do
not feel it:
you are
plugged in somewhere else
and refuse
to disconnect the umbilical cord.
