Flamingo

A bright pink plastic flamingo
flutters down to the balcony awning.
The corner of my eye catches it
and tells my heart to start pounding,
the bile in my stomach to rotate,
my skin to prickle and perspire.
"Is this about the children?" she asks.
A pause. A blink.
An explosion contained in terse, controlled
- clipped - words.
"What. Children." I say.

"The children in Africa? In Congo or Sudan?
The children in Afghanistan, perhaps? Pakistan?"

She smiles, irritatingly pleasant,
pink and plastic in her perfect mask.

"is this
about the children?"

My eyes, if they could, would flash
a warning.

"In the hospital? In the orphanages?
In the cancer wards watching their
parents inject poison to save themselves?

In the morgues?"

A pause. A blink.
A smile.

"Well,
is this about
the children?"

"What Children?" I gasp, a fish on the jetty.
"What fucking children?"
I cry, I throw at her flamingo face,
"There are no fucking children!"
my words round and precise,
until they crash against her lips
which arch as she breaths back
"Exactly."
Pen twirling, eyebrow raises
like the sure leg of a waterbird,
"Exactly."

-Amanda Wells, 2014