Tonight's Poet Corner: Transfixed
Transfixed by Belinda Roddie She enters the restaurant at half past madness, when it's getting dark, but the summer air is still strawberry pie sticky, and there's not enough liquor in the world to quench your unending desert thirst. I watch from my corner table - sitting alone, as usual, having already turned my jacket purple from too much wine. A friend accompanies her, guiding her by the crook of her freckled arm, directing her to a stool while advising her not to pay attention to the calories listed beside each entree on the menu. "Don't worry about it," the friend says. "It's good food here. Just pretend that this night doesn't count." I remember her from high school days. The days she visited a locker only two down from mine. Back then, she wore baggy hoodies and paint-spotted jeans for art class, her cheeks and jaw raw and ragged and decorated with dozens of pink, round bandages. She tried desperately to shave aw