Paper Girl Poem by Caroline Misner

The sprung clock
jangled my nervous system to tatters
and I awoke
to a listless dawn bleeding
its nectars into the mist.

It should have been summer then
but the morning had other plans.
It rained, cold and sightless, grey
as the old sticks and trunks
that upheld the slick foliage
from the ravine all the way up
to the quarry on top of the hill.

And all the little houses
with their battered shingles
leaked warmth from the cracks
of their windows and doors
and their crooked chimneys that stood
hollow and bare above the dripping eaves.
They were warm as wombs and I longed
to crawl into them and retrieve
the sleep that eluded me.

The newspapers hunched in bundles,
tied with string so tight
I couldn’t slip a finger between
the damp newsprint and its bindings.
I had to snip them with shears;
they sprung apart like escaping snakes.

I gathered them in a burlap sack,
in neat rows to conserve space;
I’d have to return to the shed
and gather more before
my route was done.

I stepped out in my red rain slicker,
legs bare in shorts and gummy boots
that allowed the rain to trickle in,
hauling my bag over a single shoulder,
one hand free to clasp my hood in place.
The rain pasted my bangs
to my brow, water sloshed
in puddles beneath each step.

The fog snuffed out the crackling rain,
held it up to a coal grey sky
where behind the veil, wild stars
winked out one by one.

Black ink stained my fingers like soot
and mottled my satchel; my neck
ached from the weight, the cold
dampness stiffened my hands
into raven’s claws.

Every door held its own secrets;
muffled voices rose and fell
to the tattoo of the morning.
I dropped the newspapers, rolled
into hollow logs and secured
with elastics, on each doorstep,
lightened my burden one bundle
at a time.

Each house looked upon the other,
identical save for the outcroppings
of hedges, willows, beds of roses
with buds squeezed shut
like small balled fists sneering
and thumbing their noses against the clime.

I stepped upon a porch of cracked concrete
at a house that may
have been yours; pots
of geraniums flanked the entrance,
their vermilions laundered to pink.
A screen door barred me
from the house, dark as a cavern
but mild and inviting.

The weather inside was thick
with the scent of brewing coffee,
fresh buttered toast, something
sweet baking in the oven.
The inhabitants were oblivious to me.

The TV was on; three
small children in patterned pyjamas
lolled on their bellies, chins
propped in small curled hands,
and watched cartoons.
I paused to see Bugs Bunny torment
his old nemesis, Yosemite Sam,
and thought how one of those
three warm children should be me.

I dropped the wet newspaper
like a freshly birthed placenta
on the stoop and turned,
exiled back into the streets.
The sodden nylon of my rain jacket
had thinned to parchment
and plastered my arms
like a second layer of skin.

By then the sun had bored
a hole through the clouds
and lit up the fog, burning
in the sky like a newly minted
copper penny.
A sickly alder drooped by the curb
bony branches let me know
that it was either dead or dying.