Someone had to peel
 the apples and potatoes
while the family car
 chugged away.
 Arranging daily matters
   habits
   life
 as the family car boiled
  gas and oil
 eating up oxygen
 spewing carbon monoxide
 gas
on her sitting quietly 
 desperately agonizing
her times of love-making
and the issue of birth.
Shame, stigmas, sorrow
So she peeled away apples
and potato crusts
leaving them raw and exposed
to the gaseous clouds
swelling, slipping silently
up and past their mutual 
 pores
  nostrils.
The man she married
 was not the one chosen
 by her
but by her parents
 was she forever banished
to meet and marry another
 of their own choosing.

Taking her life
  slipping to the floor
like red and brown peels
  of apple and potato.

Rhea Côté Robbins
a true story 
poem written sometime before 1991