TNG reader Mike B. submits this poem, the fifth in a Thursday series. Illustration by Ryan Blomberg.

This poem is about an old roommate I had. She was the passive-aggressive’s passive-aggressive. The kind who wouldn’t speak to you or even acknowledge your presence unless she felt it was absolutely necessary. Needless to say, I ended up hiding in my room most of the time to avoid being in the same room as her (yes, she wins, I know).

So one day after being chased out of the living room on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I fled into my room where I could hear her fitfully flipping the pages of the Sunday paper every few seconds. Flip-flip… Flip-flip… Flip-flip…

It took all my strength not to scream right there and then. Instead, I started writing this poem.

She flips the page

She flips the page, and page again—
Hungry, seeking, earnest eyes
Ingest. Informed, she flips the page,
And page again. The paper lies
In pieces, parsed in sections—News,
Opinion, Arts—that loll in chairs
And on the floor, and flit and lop
Their corners in the Sunday breeze,
The kind that walks through summer parks,
Or settles stilly in a room
Where nothing need be done. And flips
The page, and page again, and reads
From back to front to back, until
She’s sure she hasn’t missed a bit
Of everything she ought to know—
Or has she? (Flip again, again!)
In every bundle trundled home
On every Sunday, opens up
To her a world, a universe,
The realm of all humanity
And nature on display—and God
Himself, whatever role He plays
To motivate the souls who strut
And fret the afternoon they have
To catch the eye of her who flips
The page, and page again, and flips
The page again, again: Famines!
Scandals! Deep space photos! Business
Going down. No, up! No, down! The
President! A local man who
Saved a child! Another child who
Sadly died; how can we keep this
Tragedy from happening to
Someone else? A clever column
Makes her smile, a serious one
Makes her think—but only for a
Moment, till it’s time to put it
All away. And then she folds
The pages back into the form
She found them in, and slides them in
A paper bag, and drops them by
The door. Their edges slump; their time
To lounge in coffee-scented sun-
beams gone. And facelessly she sits
and doesn’t speak a word to me
until she’s moved to move herself
to somewhere only she would go
but never tell me where. And as
she leaves, she overturns the bag
of pages, new an afternoon
ago, but worthless now, as if
they had a thing to say
she hadn’t long since known.

Read more Thursday Poems:
Depressing Lesbian Gift Shop
Snapshot
Subway Muezzin
On Failure, and To It

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