Her Mixed Messages

A young woman sat back on cushions in a trendy café amongst friends and with a glass of wine They each took turns to peer into a kaleidoscope He handed it to her with a free and whimsical smile She took gingerly from his grasp, she could have looked interested But she wasn’t She could have followed the ever shifting patterns and shapes and pre-scripted its red-carpet premiere She couldn’t Or twisted her delicate and slender fingers more firmly around its base while her meaty and wholesome palm pressed warmly on its head She didn’t She should have manipulated the colour pigments and sent a thousand rainbows shooting into the sky She hadn’t She could have single-handedly liberated black from white and gave green a new lease of life She wouldn’t Watching the shifting patterns, she could have challenged its habits and passive tendencies But she didn’t. She shouldn’t As the last to receive it, she placed it down onto the table they were sitting around and stared blankly at a picture of a deflated mattress painted by a man with careful haste in thin and vague watercolour She could have noticed the suns reflective light at the end of the kaleidoscopes funnel tubing But she didn’t