i sensed she only ever saw
what she wanted to see
what she expected to see
though really she was
simply refusing to perceive
the hemorrhagic fever that life can sometimes be for other people
she’d decided the world worked in a certain way
and so it did
at least for her
at least for a while
experience left no mark and ignorance persisted, she
seemed
innocent but actually she was something else
beneath that exterior softness, that moist youth
something unlovely
something inflexible
something treacherous dwelled inside her
falseness inhabited her like a ghost
it wasn’t only me, other people felt it, too, i’m sure of that
then the change came
recently, I mean
maybe six months ago? I’m not sure
and I’m not sure how it happened but instead of the gradual accumulation of worldly knowledge
that most of us undergo
truth took her by surprise
and after that she didn’t look mature or knowledgeable
she just looked…
soiled
but she pretended nothing had happened
sentimentally continued to believe in what she insisted must be true
still her wide eyes narrowed with suspicion
her posture stiffened
she walked in a new, flat-footed way, righteous indignation pounding the pavement with each step
sometimes, passing her curtainless window, I’d see
her sitting in there, gazing into
space
something inside had gone rotten
like a tooth needing to be pulled
Susan Scutti
Susan Scutti's poems appear in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Nuyorican Poets Cafe Anthology, Tin House Online, New York Quarterly, 2 Bridges Review, Oxford Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor, Loose Change, The City Key and a number of other journals and anthologies. Paper Kite Press published a full-length collection of her poems. Three Rooms Press published her chapbook. She's a graduate of Yale (a former scholarship kid) with a Masters from City University of New York. She's moved around quite a bit and currently lives on an island of tall buildings, incessant talk, and loud traffic.