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Hell is where you can see

D.S. Maolalai

She’s in her middle forties
and worked with me
part time
selling wine and whiskey.
She laughs too loudly
and makes jokes with the
men that come in to the shop.
She has a bitterness about the world
and hates those she judges less
than her
but she claims to love her work
and I have heard stories that
suggest her bitterness may
not be entirely unjustified.
I think she once had
an unhappy love affair
that drove her to cliffs edge and
closer,
to rag doll anger and drunken
four o clock answering machines
and since then
nothing.

No children, of course
little money
no success
no love,
just small pleasures,
television serials.
She likes to talk about her dog
and about her youth.
Even for a hard old woman
you can tell once she
felt young.

I think when people
talk of hell, they
talk of the obvious hells,
booze, madness, illness.
But spare a thought for the
other kind of hell
the kind that leaves you unhappy
and terrified
paralyzed from the waist
up
serving a man with a dripping nose
and laughing too loudly.
I once hated her
and I believe she may have
hated me,
but now I would like to say,
Miriam,
if you ever happen to read this
that I have never looked more kindly upon you
than when I thought of hell,
even though I doubt you’d like
to hear that.

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