From Side To Side

I'd been at my desk all day, surrounded by computers flashing fish and stars and RGB colour palettes and ribbons of cards. I was interrupted for the basest of needs and went from reaching far through the world back into reaching self. The light is on in the bathroom and it isn't soft and Bondi blue but bare Edison yellow. I am scared for a moment because I see an old woman standing there with grey brittle hair and pale dry skin and crooked glasses and chapped lips and I think "who are you?"

I am not her, because I am still riding in fast cars past the corn that needs detassling and I am still laughing at television and eating frosting from the plastic can and shorting the cake. I am not her because I haven't had babies yet and I haven't gone to oxford to debate the origins of the bard and I haven't made love to a confused yet handsome priest in the vatican library.

I know she is catching me because she picks out my clothes and makes me say please and thank you and is bothered by violence on television and thinks that teenagers wear slutty t-shirts. Sometimes other people make the mistake of thinking she caught me because they call me her name without realising that I am called Kath or Kat and not Maam. I can't explain that she only lives in certain places like the bathroom mirror and my brain at 3:00 in the morning.