For you she learned to wear a short black slipand red lipstick,how to order a glass of red wineand finish it. She learned to reach outas if to touch your arm and then nottouch it, changing the subject.she’d begin, orTo call your best friendsby their schoolboy namesand give them kisses good-bye,to look away when they say! So your confidence grows.She doesn’t ask what you wantbecause she knows.Isn’t that what you think?When actually she was only waitingto be stunned, and then do this,never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:in one motion up, over, and gone,the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,her face flashing away from you in the fabricso that you couldn’t say if she wasappearing or disappearing.

For you she learned to wear a short black slipand red lipstick,how to order a glass of red wineand finish it. She learned to reach outas if to touch your arm and then nottouch it, changing the subject.she’d begin, orTo call your best friendsby their schoolboy namesand give them kisses good-bye,to look away when they say! So your confidence grows.She doesn’t ask what you wantbecause she knows.Isn’t that what you think?When actually she was only waitingto be stunned, and then do this,never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:in one motion up, over, and gone,the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,her face flashing away from you in the fabricso that you couldn’t say if she wasappearing or disappearing.

– Deborah Garrison –

A Working Girl Can’t Win

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