BECAUSE
When she is toddling small, she learns to hear real good because she cannot see.
Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice-
cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to
look away; whether to stop and say hello or go head-down-hurrying past. Most days
she finds it’s safer not to look, to tell her feet to keep moving. She lowers her eyes
to study the pavement. Some people say she is rude. At school, she learns to
squint and sit close to the blackboard. She is seven before anybody notices. At
home she learns to listen for the sound of her name, its pattern of stresses and
syllables. She knows, when she hears them, some kind of trouble is coming her
way. Her favourite song is Three Blind Mice.
Abigail Ottley is based in Penzance, Cornwall. This year, she placed second in the Plaza Prose Poetry competition and third in the Patricia Eschen Poetry Prize.