OUTSIDER
Lonely little stick figure,
In stark lines of black and white
You stand, motionless.
You have no hands.
Just empty arms that trail off and go nowhere,
Ending unceremoniously at the base of your wrists.
So you couldn’t reach up
Or pat a shoulder in consolation
Or caress the cheek of someone dear.
And you cannot move ahead or run back to places familiar;
You have no feet.
Rooted to the same spot for eternity, the same position,
Caught in the same net of lines on paper.
I wish I could tell what you’re thinking
But your face is carefully blank.
I cannot even see if you are looking at me or away.
There you stand, a scrawl in the margin –
The page numbers in a newspaper.
Neat and tidy, black and white.
You sit on the sidelines.
And you say nothing.
A pastiche of a person,
Like you had been scratched in lead pencil by a mischievous teenager
Onto the ceiling of the Sistine.
Colourless,
Motionless,
Utterly, utterly out of place.
© mjc 18 January 2013
