tINSMITH'S aWL*

She hiked her skirt up over her thighs, scabby and red with blotches, and rearranged the ribbon in her hair; a red and blue one with a tinsmith’s awl pinched the bow. ‘These are sad times,’ she thought to herself, ‘sad indeed.’ She inspected her feet, shod in Rubbermaid sandals, someone else’s castaways, and smiled, ‘sad times indeed.’ ‘Should the sky fall in I wouldn’t pay it any notice’, she thought, ‘as skies are interchangeable and nobody’s business, not even mine, were I to bother, which I never will’. A gull biffed across the top of her head, feet flapping against the bow in her hair, cackling like a barn cat, a cigarette butt twisted into its beak. She threw her hands up over her head and bawled, ‘away from me you fucking rat, haven’t you anything better to do than muss the bow in my hair?’