Ursula Kiernan
Casualty
This ones’s in a bad way. Hard to tell if she’s
conscious.
Look at her hand, poking out of the blanket.
Did you ever see such bloodless claws,
and the dirt under her nails!
Doesn’t she care about her appearance?
And where is her wedding ring?
The label says ‘Mrs’.
You can see it’s a hard-working hand. The
gritty palm
and worn fingers show it has helped to shift
rubble, make rockeries,
mend windows, prune roses, split firewood,
make jam and stain floors.
And doubtless it has done its share of wiping
kids’ noses and bottoms.
Hard to imagine its courting days. But she
must
have been somebody’s sweetheart once.
She’s ruptured her spleen, poor old bat.
Did she ever sit down? Read a book? Have
somebody
bring her a cup of tea?
Her hands tell a lot. Just as well they can’t
talk.
Page(s) 71
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