Anxiety

The lady in a long pink fluffy coat

Over a pink turtle-neck sweater,

Was suffering,

Suffering invisibly and openly,

Constantly, she cranes her neck behind to see

Furtively looking.

out through the cafe door

As if expecting someone,

Someone,

She's not too keen to encounter.

Tugging gently at the tassel dangling from her coat,

She has anxious darting eyes

Mumbling soft words to herself as she turns frequently

Back and forth, back and forth

Her lips move in solo mime

Nothing to be heard

Nervously, she picks at a spot on the side of her face,

She had swept her dishevelled hair back.

Clipped, almost scalp tight

Suddenly, whilst she wasn’t anxiously peering,

A woman surreptitiously arrives.

They have similar rounded facial features.

Miss Pink’s mother, maybe?

Mother rummages through Miss Pink’s carriers

searching for illicit, ill-conceived purchases,

laying bought goods on the cafes table

In the full and open glare of others.

The young girl’s anxiety heightens,

Head scratching,

Face pulling

Eyes wide

Then a conscious relief

A clear audible breath-filled sigh

Mother has found nothing,

It also relieved onlookers of the scene

Miss Pink quaffs her sparkling water

Then affixing a matching pink facemask

Over a relieved smile

They both depart,

Of course, mother leads the way,

Surmising, from the mother's age, from this angle

The young girl was possibly in her mid-thirties

However, she appears as old as her mother

Life for this mother's daughter has been difficult

Are her fears generated by nature or nurture?

Was anxiety developed in her mother's womb?

As Miss Pink's fearful, conjoined twin.