A Matronly Dishwater Blond
So drab and invisible, I notice how un-noticed I am,
a state to revel in, and I do, yet, too, the self folds
back in on herself, pure observer, rarely, these days,
observed. Not as when I was young, auburn-headed,
built, as one of my first lover’s told me, like a brick
shithouse. A kittenish mix of sexpot and plumb
hometown girl, I was a truly shy exhibitionist,
which, in retrospect, I can see, made me tauntingly
tempting, the way dogs charge after a skittish cat
but ignore a blasé one. Often, I fled serious attention,
while nonetheless flaunting, with clumsy flare,
my endowments––my grandmother’s euphemism.
Just as the jell-packaged pheromones we stick
on the side of a Japanese beetle trap, will, by
mid-August, stop sidetracking beetles, my allure
faded in my forties. Thereafter I felt charmed
walking the world without that muzzy vibration
sparking the air. Free-wheeling delight possessed
me, sexual tension having slid its slipknot down
my arms, down my thighs. I felt as if I’d awakened,
not from a nightmare, but from a dream filled
with distortions. Although, truth be told, at times
I miss the shenanigans my looks could cause––
the tongue-tied sales clerk, flirtatious physician,
girlfriends’ boyfriends confiding gravely while
gauging the degree of sympathy in my deliberately
gone-soft eyes. Now all tomfoolery’s over with
and cheerfully forsaken,
except for the wish to be seen as simply there.