she slipped on the polished linoleum and 
cracked the side of her head open on the same polished linoleum.
a weird glob of rainbowed something crawled part way out 
and then hung needily and siamese from the fragments like an enormous tongue.
red orange yellow green blue and purple.

so now her parents visit once a week to put little turquoise ribbons in her hair 
and the rest of the time she cripple-shakes up and down an empty
turquoise hallway with her brightly stickered paddle walker 
and her broken head jerks itself around so fast sometimes 
it looks like christmas
and other times it just tilts greasily
and shivers the tired scrambled rhythms of bad electricity
making that droopy little rainbow flop against her neck 
like a wet gum pancake
wobbling and spitting technicolor all over her thread-worn bathrobe.