Money Talks

Rhona McAdam
From:   Creating the Country. Thistledown, 1989.

It whispers outside her window
at night, as she lingers
between dreams that promise
the future in another part of town,
away from this world of broken
locks and basement suites.

It chatters in her ear beneath
the echoes of the mall, when she
wanders the halls, her hands
empty in her pockets or surfacing
to take the temporary warmth
of objects she'll never own.

It mutters in the voices of landlords
and teachers and grocery store clerks;
it reaches beneath her pride and bares
her life and her mother's life
and it tells them what to do.

It sneaks into her belly and growls
until she has to laugh too long
and too loud with her friends
so they won't hear what it's saying
about her.

It yells orders at her
and it takes anything it wants
and she'll spend her whole life
running toward it and
hearing it break
into laughter, just
out of reach, just
like her mother who sits today
with her hands over her ears
humming like crazy.

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Rhona McAdam's works copyright © to the author.