sat on concrete, even though it was raining, and winter, and her eyes rolled back so only the whites showed. The leg not hidden by her rust-colored skirt was twisted like old rope. The hand holding mine tugged me forward and, looking up, a spray of sympathy, she does it for sympathy, then Chanel No. 5, bright lights, and the scraping of hangers over metal rack-bones. As my aunt joined the others, circling the circles of hissing fabric, I disappeared: the wool coats, hair curtains around me. Squatting, making my skirt into a bell, I hid my two perfect legs.
Danielle Jones is a poet living in Salem, Massachusetts with her two sons. After the pandemic there might be more, but for now, that’s it.