Eloisa And The Machine Poem by Eloisa Gearhart

Fourteen days before thirty-two
I looked like twenty-seven but the change seeped within me
slowly, pudgy fingers turning the contrast down
an old and bulky color TV where you had to fiddle
with the antenna just right to remove the fuzz
the vertical bouncing on occasion
the fingers turning so slowly it's nearly imperceptible
so that you become use to the night when
it finally wraps around your house in its firm grip

My hand was dangling out the window on the forty mile drive home from a job I disdained and once commented,
'This job is taking the life from me'

I meant it literally and annotated my feelings so quietly under my breath so that only those paying the greatest attention or sitting close enough to feel my breath would feel those words

Perhaps it was because I had traded away my oversized T-shirts that
hid too many curves
made my body more unisex
hips straight and rigid
meshing with the straight legged
wrinkling upon their own waves of material
type Jeans
for complimentary jeans

Jeans that defined my waist and proportioned my hips
just enough to make me look curvy enough to seem
modestly sensual
in my baggy skin and
in light of my broad shoulders

traded away unadorned head of hair
a push back hair band
rounded neck line
a V neck or
perhaps the four rings upon my fingers that I wore religiously

Was that why I noticed my hands?

They didn't look 27 or 32 but they looked foreign, hard working, rough and strong and tired like the hands I'd seen on other women in their 50s

It was awkward, I'll readily admit this is so
as the time I heard the Star Spangled Banner on the radio before the baseball game and wondered
if the singer was a young boy or a grown women and couldn't decide whether I liked the sound until I knew the source

That type of awkward is how I felt
excited and scared
I couldn't decide if I enjoyed myself or was appalled that
The contrast was changing