Poetry by Jen Payne

      Ed Suominen CC



Things Appear Smaller from Far Away

It had become meager

the smallest portions of love
meted out in tiny bowls
with tiny spoons even

in gestures that implied
generosity

and she would smile
at the novelty of
the dollhouse scale
into which she had settled

it was a full-face smile
so her eyes could close
pretend she didn’t see it all
for what it was

which was

just enough to keep her
posed in the pretense of it

the pretending
it was all enough --
that stingy love
to which he couldn’t even
give a name

because that would be too much

don’t go fishing
he chastised
when she said she loved him
one last time and left

before she got so small
she disappeared

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Mirror, Mirror

The girl in the mirror takes on the twisted shape required to put on earrings — it’s a learned posture: how to do deft work without consideration.

I watch as she decorates herself with the green peridot pair I loved so much and notice the favorite pullover I wore once on a whale trip off the coast of Cape Cod.

The girl is familiar — the eyes mostly, since they are all I choose to look at usually. Those hardly change at all, except when a certain mood hits and they momentarily turn as green as those earrings.

Still, we look at each other sometimes — this girl and I — and we have that kind of silent eye conversation you can only have with people who know you well enough.

Most often it’s a this will have to do rolled-eyes thing she’s perfected. A slight lopsided smirk as if to say…something. I don’t know what.

God, she’s had that look since kindergarten. With a faded class picture to prove it. It seems ironic, sardonic, sarcastic. At five years old?

It’s either the smile-smirk of an old soul or a poet, I can’t decide. Reborn or born that way?

But five was a long time ago. Time enough to let smirk lines coexist with laugh lines and that what the fuck indent between her brows.

Has she been perplexed all this time? Since five? Or is circular? Does she come around to understanding now and then? Faith and confidence, then adrift, nonplussed, confused.

There are days I recognize the all of that. Can see the well-roundedness to her reflections. And days I don’t.

Days I don’t even want to look — use my peripheral senses to pat down the cowlick and add a little color to her cheeks. There, there — a small comfort before we go about our day.

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Jen Payne is a poet, author, photographer, and artist. She is inspired by those life moments that move us most — love and loss, joy and disappointment, milestones and turning points. When she is not exploring our connections with one another, she enjoys contemplating our relationships with nature, creativity, and spirituality. Ultimately, she believes it is the alchemy of those things that helps us find balance in this frenetic, spinning world. Jen has published five books: Look Up! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, Waiting Out the Storm, Water Under the Bridge: A Sort-of Love Story, and Sleeping with Ghosts: Poems & Musings. She writes regularly at www.randomactsofwriting.net.
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