The enormous, laughing woman

rolled into the room

like a jovial boulder of

blubbering flesh, emanating waves

of saccharine good cheer

more insistent than the Great Boston

Molasses Explosion.

She oozed over to the black and white figure

slumped over in the unpainted wooden chair,

and bellowed in a tornado-siren voice,

"What's wrong, honey? You look flatter

than a roadkill possum!"

Not bothering to look at her,

he replied, almost inaudibly,

"I can't make the fear stop."

The gelatinous mass of femininity

next to him burst out in a good-natured

thunderclap and shouted,

"Well ain't that the shit!"

She wrapped a quivering mass

of friendly arm around his shoulders,

squeezed him like a Moon Pie,

and then snapped his neck like a Popsicle stick.

"Hope that helps, sugar," she chuckled.

Turning like a small planet rotating on its axis,

she exclaimed, to no one in particular,

"Some folks you just can't talk to,"

and orbited back out the doorway.