Thick Skin

better late than never to have acquired that thick skin as she spent so many years envying those alligators while tearing up her own insides like she had purposefully swallowed razor blades watching the world round her enclose & her options for being “saved” dwindle--- soon away with the men in her life who had brought with them an inferiority complex & soon away with the women in her life who had instilled within her a basket of groundless & ever-multiplying aesthetic solutions, yes, better late than never to gut them all out like a specially designed grapefruit spoon does the flesh of the grapefruit or sharp wit & truth does the dumbfounded liar--- not waiting for that sickle of death locked in a cage “measuring out her life with coffee spoons,” but instead, now more than ever in the face of constant doctor’s calls & growing prescriptions needing to be filled, she beats relentless at the speed bag snorting up phlegm & spitting on this life that has brought her enough grief to have already buried someone whose skin had stayed thin.