White Plaster Options

[Aphrodite]

You lie there, solid and firm,  
as onlookers gawk and comment  
on how good you turned out.  
 
“They did such a good job,” it is said,    
like white plaster thrown on hard walls,  
you just take it.  
 
How you love to hold hands, but not your own,  
the Rosary Beads  d r a p e   loosely cross  
spindly fingers, like drops from tears cried dry.  
 
In the bed you made, you lie cold,  
a hard box unlike the downy soft  
mattress you once fell into.  
 
In your bed, you lie ravaged from the  
poison of nicotine’s revenge.  
 
Oh, but for just one more breath of clean air.  
©Linda Balboni 2005