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Killing the Silence

John T. Hitchner

She wore broad pastels
to hide her weight—
breasts soft as pillows,
hips wide as doors.
“Piano legs,” her brothers derided.
She tried to hide it all
with dresss and smiles
that never covered enough
what everybody saw.

At home,
she scanned wedding pictures
where she stood near ushers
who danced their obligatory dance
with her.
In front of the mirror
she turned this way and that way;
she saw what she saw:
not a sweet,“big-boned woman,”
but ‘the fat lady’
who yacked on the phone
to her sisters, never her brothers,
just to talk, just to kill time,
kill the silence.

“Go on a cruise, honey,
you’ll meet some nice people there,”
her mother encouraged her.
“Yeh, you should do that,”
her sisters said.

No. Too many fake smiles,
too many “Nice to’ve met you’s”
too many times.

“I’ll be OK,” she said to herself,
her apartment’s taunting silence
loud as the dark after she turned out the lights.

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