Serena Malcolm

Another victim is brought to tears
by these antisocial miscreants,
My colleague goes to roll his eyes and,
silently, I must chastise him,
As she calls on us to stop it,
I pull a tissue from my pocket,
From his he pulls his mobile phone
and averts his eyes from poor, poor Joan.

And as she weeps, I sympathise,
But he just taps his foot and sighs,
In his head he knows we’ve walked this trail,
Recounts the times we’ve heard this tale,
We’ve heard it once, and heard it thrice,
And he’s numb to the troubles of her life,
And when we leave he’ll joke, and moan,
and deride the woes of poor, poor Joan,

I know – I do know – thick skin’s key
to wading through this treacle sea,
But I just can’t shake Joan from my mind,
I can’t not care – Lord knows I’ve tried,
So blighted by empathic ways
I take her home and let her stay,
My home is filled with Kathryns, Tonys,
Stephens, and now poor, poor Joan.

I struggled then a decade gone,
I struggle now, and struggle on,
I cannot close my mind to cope,
Can’t make their strife an inside joke,
I just don’t wish to play along,
To stay here where I don’t belong,
And truth be told, I’ve always known
my heart belongs to poor, poor Joan.

Today’s NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo prompt involved “writing out a list of all of your different layers of identity. For example, you might be a wife, a grandmother, a Philadelphian, a dental assistant, a rabid Phillies fan, a seamstress, retiree, agnostic, cancer survivor, etc.. These are all ways you could be described or lenses you could be viewed through. Now divide all of those things into lists of what makes you feel powerful and what makes you feel vulnerable. Now write a poem in which one of the identities from the first list contends or talks with an identity from the second list.”

I only loosely followed the prompt today, choosing to write about an longstanding internal conflict I face within my day job: Do I assimilate or stay true to myself…?