Overread at the Counter: Third Grade on the Playground, 1977

from 366.

58.

Something
with a swingline came rotten through the schoolyard,
part curls
and rough jeans, the yellow sunlight glazed her lineback shoulders,
each freckle
seemed to blaze the same ferocious crimson
as her fist
connected with my eye,

and then
there was the sun, fading suddenly with purple clouds
swelling,
swelling, I thought idly maybe it was going to rain,
felt
something like raindrops on my cheek, but rain drops are
not so
thick, not so with this metallic taste,

the laughter
was all around me, but distant, as distant as the
blacked out,
ribbon-holed sun, the laughter seemed almost
comforting,
like a cushion against my own tears, and

with my
remaining eye, I saw her snatch up her lip gloss
from
underneath the swingset, where I’d knocked it out of her hands,
then she
gathered her girls and as a group, migrated to further sun.