“It isn’t that great,” she says. “It all ends
badly one way or another.”
And I believe her when she says it.
Not because her experiences are that commanding
but mostly because she is who she is
and it feels like it feels.

Little things make up the big picture,
details are everything.
She is ever the artist,
arranging scenes in her mind.
And just when I think she may be
satisfied, she cries:
“Cut!”

With a motherly air, and yet completely
a child, she lives her life –
escaping in daydreams and short reveries.
“Sometimes you just gotta be yourself,”
she says.
I know what she means, but I’ve trouble
following her advice.

She doesn’t trust easily, or so she says.
But she makes me feel that I’ve not worked
hard enough.
With her hypocritical essence and decorations,
she doesn’t say, “I am a walking contradiction.”
And she doesn’t have to.

11/22/2002

Posted on 04/08/2006
Copyright © 2025 Meghan Helmich