She removed the breadcrumbs from the base

of her fingers with what to some

would have been just the casual flick

of a an irritating itch easily quelled

by the simplest of caresses

but having watched her sullen expression

take root and a mean glaze searching

for the right level of disgust

as she destroyed the turkey sandwich on rye

as though it was the last edible substance on Earth,

I saw her flick her fingers dry of the small

leftover fragments as if she was brushing

off her husband’s memories of bedroom small talk

or the tangled web of a spider that had dared

spoil her view of the bleach filled drains.

 

There was violence in those fingers,

her perfectly rounded nails, brushed with

death as the nail polish oozed testament, red

drip dry dead

and the mean look in her in eye sharpened

as she stabbed a slightly bigger crumb

with the edge of her middle finger

and her lips curled up cruelly as if she

had the ability to become Rook like

and scavenge and harvest any thing

that was left on the picked clean carcass

drying and bleaching

in the Noon day sun…

 

A young woman with olive skin,

tired and far from home

wandered past her eye line

and the lips snarled in greed

and she made her move…

Ian D. Hall 2015