seven shots of anna

Gift shop, Chicago, December 1998

Anna seeks out Cezanne; her husband searches for Monet.  In the window, a glass vase full
of midday sunshine.  Dark violet as healing bruises, the glass is warm, heavy, home
in her arms.  She fingers twelve months of Miro, magnetic Manet, Matisse for the wall,
but she decides on Degas, Hopper’s Hotel Room in a paperweight with a green felt bottom.
Today, he is generous, loving, offers more.  She shakes her head no, pushes her hands
into fleece gloves.  They head for plates of pad Thai, the Impressionists under wraps.

First apartment at 37, May 2004

At last, she has space for the vacuum, her coats, squares of pastel linen still wrapped
in plastic.  In the utility room, she stores the ironing board, detergent, Downy refills
she found on sale.  Eventually, she’ll purchase WD-40, nails, and wood glue for the hand-
me-down bookcase.  Safe on the second floor, she is free of him.  She is not home-
sick for the basement apartment and overhead footsteps.  No longer on the bottom,
she hears only rain against the roof, the hint of bass thumping inside stucco walls.

Parisian bar, July 1990

You were part of history, he stresses.  You saw Berlin divided into two before the Wall
came down.  I don’t feel historical, she murmurs.  My palms are clean.  I wasn’t wrapped
around a sledgehammer or bullhorn, didn’t demolish graffiti and granite from bottom
to top. She swirls her martini, listens to the music of French tongues, unable to fill
in the blanks with the words she knows in the same romance.  She sulks, longs for home
where conversations make sense.  She is an interloper here, just a girl with shaking hands.

Leaving him, April 2004

The Monte Carlo on loan is red, slick, missing only gold chains, a salesman.  Her hands
slide across black plush, leather, the phallic gearshift, stereo button nubs.  Walled
behind sound, she is a flipside Fortunato.  Covert behind smoke-grey glass, she is at home
in a car that doesn’t smell like him.  She dumps new CDs on the seat, most still wrapped.
She leaves Indiana — his home — and drives towards the safety of her family.  The car fills
with bass and her voice.  The weight of him sinks like an anchor loosed to a lake’s bottom.

Dorm room, November 1985

Anna stuffs herself into tight jeans, yanks out tangles while Queen sings fat bottomed
girls, you make the rockin’ world go round. She combs, crimps, chews on the handle
of her brush, twists her fingers around pastel bands while her Coke can ashtray fills
with butts.  She dusts violet high on her cheeks and her eyelids and glosses her lips.  Wall-
flower, she is a stranger in a Cover Girl world, but reads Cosmo anyway, under wraps,
ashamed she spends money on its sleek pages.  She is determined to stop being homely.

Apartment for rent, March 2004

Jack from #2C sells what he no longer wants: rollerblades, a crumpled Ziploc of home-
grown from his best friend’s hall closet, two houndstooth jackets.  He hit bottom
last week, quit bartending, and decided to pursue acting.  The bottle blonde from #1D wraps
herself around him, but she’s staying here.  He packs his car with all that one set of hands
can carry.  Compact, his dreams of soap opera stardom.  In five years, NBC office walls
will boast his blown-up glossy headshot.  Daytime’s current fancy, he will think himself full.

Java joint, Michigan, December 2004

Ann Arbor brings peace, the feeling of home.  The apron-clad blond, 20-something, hands
the girl a fat bottom mug, says you’re beautiful.  Anna blushes, red as ribbons on the walls
behind him.  A smile wraps across her face.  Beautiful: salve for fissures to be filled.