Budgeting: February 1963
by Carol Wolrich
ca.chirl@yahoo.co.uk
Making
two ends meet around the other
side
of a long week, without fraying,
or
losing the hungry threads. Nudging
this
debt into tomorrow, because yester-
day
is about to knock, and there's no
time
to hide the boys in silence. Besides,
the
glass in the front door is clear
enough
to see through your excuses.
So
you will forget about new stockings,
which
is no great hardship, these days;
with
Saturday night's ironing stacked
against
your dreams of dancing. The fire
strains,
at its lowest ebb, sapped by
the
power-drain on the National Grid,
when
you hear on the wireless that a
sad
lady poet has taken her own life:
Just
thirty-one with two small children.
You
have three, including the baby.
You
weep into your frightened hands.
Isolated
with no phone. Hours to endure
before
he comes home, in the dark.
You
steal from the rent to feed the meter.
Music
follows the news, and a song
reminds
you to remember - summer.
©2007 Carol Wolrich
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