from the door as I start my first
walk to school. I am not afraid
though this crisp eyelet
dress feels like someone else’s skin
and these houses
tall faces turning
away. This morning
my mother gets to stay
where she chooses, raising
one shoulder, cradling the phone
so her hands are free to coat each
nail to a shield over each
pale finger. Smoke from her cigarette
curls across the table like the breath
of a visitor, the glamourous
woman she secretly loves.
In this dress I’m her dream
and no one’s daughter.
School is a story whose ending
she tells me she doesn’t know.
Now she opens the paper to follow
a war far away, while I march
into autumn, beneath the fences
and high windows which in time
I won’t see, just
the blackboard worn thin
with words that vanish
each night. I will find my way
through their sounds, a song
unwinding, and one day
I will open a book
and not notice I’m reading.
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