C.J.Sellers

“Pensive Parts” by C.J. Sellers

Gazing outward at the windowed sky,
she knew she’d never bear a child her own
because her body, held in hand, felt false despite
her breasts were hammers, harder than a mother’s charged.

Thankfully, her head was soft–so sensibly devoid of hope
in that cheerful hollow where the roots are sown in.
Her smile would always please, just so it never faltered.

Apparent pride turned out her weakest point of all–
there at the neck, her head popped off. Her arms and legs,
too often tested, they too, too easily went awry.
She knew it was too late to ponder now, these past slights
or time or fate or which part once made her most complete.

Her face had not changed except in hue, her hair–all but gone.
This began the year she was discarded. It was then she knew
her impermanent worth. Forlorn, these weather stains remained,
and that fade will not rejuvinate, nor if it could, no, not to new.

And so now she rests against her will and wastes interminable hours
remembering the joy of usefulness, feeling an echo of inappropriate love–
too passionate kisses once forced upon her: peck, peck, peck,
tapped against her heart like a bare branch against a closed window,
like an unsatisfied woodpecker at the sill.

“Put-in-Bay O.” reads the sporty flag that hangs behind
the generations seated neatly: my great-grandma and pa
come a long ride in their best for this–the wedding and
now photo of their oldest daughter, Anne, with Claude.

Grandpa Ira–shy-eyed farmer under bowler hat–wears black,
but bright seersucker, blue-eyed Claude–trolley-runner–sports his
straw hat tilted back, sideways cigar tucked into a grinning maw.
Claude’s tall, out of knickerbockers, both legs well in the long pants now.

Grandma Edna–fancy-hatted, long of dress–rides the chair sidesaddle
in her high-laced boots. Hands rest on lap, she’s glanced demurely to the side.
Annie–Mona Lisa under lace–sits rigid-backed, ankles-shown and legs too wide,
front-faced to the post-card making guy behind his newfangled camera box.
Her eager eyes look amused and wild as if to say, “What’s next? Let’s go.”