Linoleum Roses (Sandra Cisneros)

Sally got married like we knew she would, young and not ready but married just the same. She met a marshmellow salesman at a school bazaar, and she married him in another state where it's legal to get married before eight grade. She has her husband and her house now, her pillowcases and her plates. She says she is in love, but I think she did it to escape.

Sally says she like being married because now she gets to buy her own things when her husband gives her money. She is happy, except sometimes her husband gets angry and once he broke the door where his foot went through, though most days he is okay. Except he won't let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn't let her look out the window. And he doesn't like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless she is working.

She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission. She looks at all the things they own: the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes. She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake.

Vanitas (Joyce Carol Oates)

Philippa woke one morning in early April to discover that her face had collapsed. Overnight! Her long-celebrated cameo face! Her classic cheekbones had disappeared beneath the sagging bruises of the bags beneath her eyes. What had been smooth taut skin was now "jowls" that were puffy and discolored, the hue of old piano keys. Her eyes were small and brightly anxious, threaded with fine filaments of blood, and her aquiline nose was now a pug nose in which broken capillaries glowed with a sullen heat. Philippa stared in disbelief. She shielded her eyes with her hands and backed out of the brightly lighted bathroom. My life is over, she thought.

It was so. She could not endure the humiliation. Only a few years ago she'd been mistaken frequently as the older sister of her eighteen-year-old daughter. This was true! Strange men followed her in the street, and anonymous valentines, love poems, and long-stemmed red roses in bouquets of a dozen found their way to her door. Philippa was only forty-nine, and had anticipated many years more of worldly conquest and triumph, giddy laughter,drama and melodrama with Philippa in the starring role.

She would reveal her ruined face to only a few individuals, whom she could hardly avoid—her husband, children, relatives, a small circle of supportive friends. Among themselves they would speak in bafflement of the change in Philippa: not in her face, which looked more or less the way it had looked for years, but in her new attitude which, they agreed, had become tragic.

Keeping Things Whole (Mark Strand)

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

A Blessing (James Wright)

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.