Help Is On The Way Out

So someone might turn and see her. If that should happen, she was sure she ought to feel ashamed. If anyone had spoken to her, they might have said, “don’t be caught this way” because she’d just been standing, looking at the books, seeing enough with just the title to know the time when the book had arrived and how she got it. Tucked inside some pages would be a picture, a note, a recipe and she’d been glimpsed looking at these.

Stalled again, like on that street corner, not knowing which way to go, or standing too long at the rows of canned tomatoes, sure her life was still hiding inside pages, canned goods, street signs. But shame had worn itself out leaving her at ease and finally, exactly choiceless.