She forgot, and now she’s wearing her indoor lipstick outside. The filter of her cigarette is stained bright orange. Five more minutes on the last load of drying and she can get out of here.
She forgot, and now her lips ablaze with long-lasting metallic pearl. She’s afraid she’ll see someone she knows and they’ll ask after her and she’ll have to say, No, no she passed on. So young, they’ll say, their eyes stuck on her lips. Yes, she’ll say, straightening the length of her jacket. Yes, she was far too young. God bless, they’ll say.
Her daughter was so pale and small, but the therapist said she was ready for visitors. She’d gone to the store not knowing what girls her age like these days. She herself had only ever worn one shade of red. Looking lost at the counter, she’d let a young woman around the same age as her daughter show her samples. I don’t know what she likes, she’d said. She looks different every week. She’d bought the lot, approaching the hospital room with her shopping bag full. It was cause for celebration, a whole spoonful of oatmeal.
She’d been raised not to waste money, so she saved the lipsticks in her daughter’s Hello Kitty make-up case, rising each morning to put on the kettle, the fm radio, and her indoor lipstick.
But today she forgot, and now she’s out in the world, and it’s written all over her face.
READER
Caucasian female, 50s, with curly black hair and orange lips, wearing black wool coat and patterned silk scarf.
Fables of Brunswick Avenue
Katherine Govier
(Harper Perennial, 2005)
p 155