I Work with Nervous Women 

By Ehlayna Napolitano

 

I work with nervous women.

Quick-sorry lips

sliding across words like slip under dress
Over skin.

I work with ambitious women

with tight-knit knuckles who
are invocated in frustration.

I find myself dancing
on the lines left by pens in their hands
when their addiction spills up their skin
for everyone to see.

I work with all of them
combatting on factory-issued carpet
and warring in my chest, too.
Nervous women are tight-wrung hands;

Driven women are windy hearts.
I am wrapped up in small details and minutes on a clock
that give me Kafka eyes --
they blink awake and I am them.

 

Ehlayna Napolitano is a graduate of Hofstra University, where she studied journalism. Her first published poem was in Hofstra’s literary magazine, Font. Currently, she’s a freelance journalist in Rhode Island and a copy editor