Dear Woman at Her Desk

You sit like a young chicken on her nest. You don’t know what you’re doing with all the adult chickens. You were told to sit there until it happens. What happens? You dart glances at everyone around you hoping to glean information. You flip the ends of your hair like a chicken would fluff her feathers. Finally, you can’t stand it.

You bolt from your chair/nest. You stomp across the carpet to do something. If you were in the chicken yard, dust would erupt from your footprints, and I could track you everywhere you scurried. Here and there. Maybe Henny Penny is your name. “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Again, you settle in your chair. Still your head swivels watching for a revelation. You flip your hair again, and flutter, fluff. If I lay a handful of M&Ms on your desk, will you snatch singles like seeds and pop them in your mouth before anyone else has a chance? Or maybe you’ll scratch through them looking for all the red ones to eat first, then the brown ones, until all are gone.

Another woman cackles in another office. You rise to see what the occasion is, but too late. You missed the joke. You missed the event. You walk back to your desk. No wiser as to why you’re there, but you sit. You wait. Perhaps in time your purpose will be revealed. Perhaps in time you’ll greet a young chicken like yourself and clue her in to coop activities. Unlike the chick yard where you got to scamper around and peck at grasshoppers and dig seed treasures from dirt.

Diane Webster

Diane Webster's work has appeared in Old Red Kimono, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. One of Diane's poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry.

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