the woman who couldn’t be thin enough

she would jog all year round

even in san antonio summer when

every year a news crew would

show you could fry an egg on

the pavement. she looked like

a skeleton to my young eyes.

like... you could see the structure

of her bones. mom would point her

out, never knowing her name. i

asked why she was like that and

mom said that no matter what she

did there was something in her

brain which told her she was

never right, and that she can't be

helped. and i imagined her in

a studio apartment, eating

celery, crying into the mirror.

surely there was somebody she

loved who could tell her enough.

that summer we moved to austin

and nobody talked about the

woman who jogged like she

was trying to purge something

lodged next to the heart. and

people in san antonio will

remember her now that i have

said it. they will say 'oh yeah,

what ever happened to her?'