The Insult

by Judith Skillman

Health departed on its white horse.
Sleep left on its black mare,
and depression came like a prophecy
to haunt you with the What if’s.

In the carnival mirror you saw yourself older,
the breasts heavy, a sagging belly,
that spine whose discs now bulged.

Then the scent of paperwhites came
to your olfactory gland
and would not leave—a Narcissus
so insistent the whole house smelled
of it. There was no escaping
the sweetish, sickening fact
of the longest night
where you read instead of sleeping.

The oppression grew
until, like Atlantic City with its funhouse,
salt water taffy, and rumored murders
you became nothing but your nose.

Like a dog
who tracks beyond the known
to find what was held before him
on a scrap of cloth.