smudges

The Dalmatian woman

Bathed in evening

Walked the dusty back lanes of Poughkeepsie

And watched enviously from the corner

As women with tight dresses hung clothes on their

Tight lines

She dropped her first spot in a yard full of rose petals

Believing the opal would blend with the crimson

Rather than stand out

Like a sore green thumb

A bearded, shirtless man

Splashed stagnant rainwater on her dress

As he spun past

On his bicycle with bells and a basket

One spot lost

Many gained

She shook off her apron in an alley

Behind a restaurant that smelled of

Sirloin and supercilious

Folk

And thus it continued

Until she was almost home

All the wetness that once soaked her

The spots that once marred her

Were slowly drying, fading, dying away

And she walked into her tiny house

The paltriest one on the block

Ran a bath and washed away the last remnants of

Her soul

She drudgingly walked toward bed

Pure

Clean

Ordinary

But before climbing into the cool, pressed sheets

She reached into the nightstand and felt around in the dark for her marker

Gingerly she drew

In her inner elbow crease

The smallest imaginable dot

No larger than a needlepoint

And fell back onto the overstuffed pillows

Content, assured in the fact that

She still had

An identity

A spot

A smudge

Of character.

source one  source two