ironed ovenbird You’ve worn the same face for the entire twenty years I’ve known you–ironed straight with your mouth a carefully pressed pleat, features allowed to flit towards subdued levity on occasion but never allowed to collapse into a heap of vulnerability. And I wonder, when they cut you open and walked the twisting paths of your interior with their sterile fingers, and forced open a window that was painted shut, did they forget to replace the screen? Did they let in all the feelings, with their compound eyes and feet that taste everything they land on? When I speak to you I hear the buzz of fear underneath your contention that everything’s fine. “I’m just so tired,” you say. “I feel so OLD.” The weather is as kind as weather can be, bright and cool and fresh and calm, but you don’t want to go outside if you can’t walk there on your own. So you wait in a dark room somewhere in the depths of a crumbling hospital to be deemed well enough to go home. While stuck in a bed with abrasive sheets, you read a book I recommended, and we talk about that for a while. You’re interested in the way the protagonist was prone to migraines and anxiety. You admit that you’ve been anxious yourself, sometimes, though your husband doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word. I say that I don’t believe there’s been a single day in my life where anxiety didn’t show up unannounced carrying cubes of ham suspended in aspic, forcing me to let it in for tea. I imagine your face is linen hung out on the line, exposed and billowing, ever changing. When I see you next will you have taken an iron to its edges? Or will you let your eyes be sails, shaping the air so you’re propelled into the frothing mouth of your fear. 260428 what's it to you? who go blather from