A Sestina for Miss Pitiful

[sestina]

There are moments when she wishes to break
everything in the house - dishes, lamps, whatever she can find,
to see the delicate porcelain patterns come crashing down.
There are moments when she wishes to create something
beautiful. Something she can come home to.
And yet, these moments always pass, nothing ever comes of them.

Each day seems the same, looking back on them.
Her life isn’t difficult, but still, she wants a break
from the mundane, the fits of rage, the lost belongings she can’t find.
She catches herself always looking down
at the ground, or her feet. She runs into things.
She watches ants; wonders where they’re crawling to.

Sometimes she has tea with a friend or two,
but she feels she can’t relate to them.
One is always cheerful, the other complains of a heart that’s broken.
A person she can talk to has always been hard to find -
her mother is vacationing in Africa, and her psychologist puts her down.
They both have more important things.

Meals for one are dismal things.
She once had a fiance, but he grew tired of her, too,
and left her with the property that once belonged to both of them.
These are some of the things she would often like to break,
but a bicycle for two is just too hard to find.
She tried to ride it alone once, but kept falling down.

Her mother sent her pillows of down,
but her cat saw them as playthings.
My cat likes killing birds, so why not goose pillows, too,
she thought, and she had laughed.
Her cat was killed a week later, when someone failed to brake.
The driver was never found.