Print dress, blue rectangles on white, knee length with blue belt, butterfly glasses and fallen bouffant, sour look, you can't make her smile, not even with her little son there, and his cat and transistor radio and dirty bare feet.
Danish Modern: inexpensive working class furniture bought by young factory couples when they first set out. She's past the young couples phase, but is very much just setting out.
Unfixed identity. The bouf, the Jackie Kennedy, black brown red, curled, straightened, up down left right. Is it her? Yes, from the glasses, and the frown.
Not long till she gives up. I think, when she decides that school and work and motherhood are one too many jobs. So that when college ends so do dreams of a future different than today, and her long inward retreat begins, back into the closet, back into her head, with her fantasy novels and television and caffeine, until little by little she disappears, into fears and fat and pointless old age.
Am I responsible?
Inevitable question.