ACROPHOBIA

(*After her divorce, Wright took on the persona of gutsy Fay)

Fay's reading Virginia Woolf: how
a woman ought to have five hundred
pounds and a room of her own. Fay's got
the room all right—six flights up and over-

looking Video King, if you lean out
the bathroom window you see a slice
of sky and sometimes the handle
on the Dipper. But Fay's got acrophobia.

Open the window: her knees quake, belly
wheezes, blood leaks into her knuckles
and Fay collapses in a bang of bones.
Still Woolf holds something for Fay:

how many older women walk out with only
a sack on the back, rocks in the pocket—
where's the five hundred pounds now?
So Fay sticks stars on the bathroom ceiling,

half moon over the toilet, To The Light-
house next to the Zinfandel by the four-legged
tub; red Gloxinia in the window and snap-
shots of the offspring in each cracked

pane. When Fay gets a yen for the Dipper
she looks at those faces: one has the grin
Fay had in school the time she told them
Uncle Frank was F.D.R. in the White House,

for a whole week until they found out
Fay was the big kid in town, Fay was
a star on the ceiling, her own Big
Dipper. Fay was a Room of her Own.

by Nancy Means Wright                   

Published in Sojourner / U. Southern Illinois Press

© Copyright 2001- 2007, Nancy Means Wright. All rights reserved.

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