An Eternal Golden Braid

by David Davis

        She leans forward slightly,
        her yellow hair plaited in braids,
        fingers typing quickly at the keyboard.

                   She places her subject in a dark-lit room,
                   his hair unkempt, his face unshaved,
                   as slovenly as her ex-husband.

                   He scratches the paper with his pen,
                   scattering words on the page
                   like garden slugs, oozing toward his hand.

        She pushes him back into deeper gloom
        and flicks away garden slugs
       as they appear on her keyboard.

I stop her movement a moment too late.
Garden slugs glide up my pencil
and disappear, leaving one yellow hair behind.