Prescription

And I looked, and there was this ugly brown girl asking for some less brownness, perhaps.

I was not God, and I could not have made it so, and it broke my heart right in two-- to look at this here brown girl, who was ugly by her own standard.

Before what I saw that time, there was a smaller girl. She was pretty (by her own standard), and so then, when she asked for the change, I had sat there rather awkwardly because I didn't know it was a long time gone since she felt comfortable in her own skin.

So I stared her down, right through her ugly golden-flecked hazel eyes, and wished right then and there that I could work miracles.

I wanted awful bad to take her head and lay it along the road line;
Wanted horribly for an eighteen-wheeler to come along and pacify her mind.

And the leaves changed colors.
She did not.

I waited long.
Watched the vibrance fade from the trees,
As Shakespeare turned to Plato, and then Socrates--

She wanted blue eyes.
I turned away mine.