small carbon footprint

I watched her insinuate herself delicately into her seat.
There was, however, no grace to the delicacy – only tension.
She flinched from those plump, defiant women perched on their perilous patent heels, and did not dare move to get the old paperback from her bag.
She was a shrew, and she hunched her bony shoulders and clenched her knees, and drew her hair down and behind her ears, and risked a furtive glance from the table only once in a while.
Sensible shoes. Supermarket coat, in brown. Seemingly sexless, seemingly very far from passion in any form other than a remote threat of that which should not be approached.
What gain in her life from the tiny steps she takes without disturbing the sand under her feet?

And so the projection becomes reflection and I am, once again, exposed as beast and hateful tyrant – disturbed into rage as much by all that is weak, all that is meek, as by that which offends through the higher sins.

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