Wednesday morning and as usual no-one

wants to sit next to Sandra Dollman.  Frail

and tiny, she has about her a peculiar smell,

yeasty, not unlike wet putty.  Her skin

 

flakes to a powdery bloom, so that she leaves

a dusting of ivory-coloured stuff wherever

she leans.  And now she is hovering over

her exercise book, like a moth, in white cotton gloves,

 

gingerly gripping a pencil.  It cannot be easy

being Sandra Dollman in the village school

in 1966; watching yourself peel

away, layer by layer; not doing P.E.;

 

sitting on the wall at playtime; having no friends

to speak of or whisk you into ring-a-ring-

a-roses; people thinking you don't belong

in their company.  And all the time her hands

 

inside those cotton gloves, so she remains

just the other side of everything,

on the border of the Country of the Wrong.

She waits there as the day slowly declines.

 

 

 

©2007 C.J. Allen.  Reproduced with permission of the author.