(rowdykid)

One girl in the
group of rowdy kids,
mature enough
to smile at me
as an equal,
sits reading.
A junior high
magazine
with boys on the
cover who look
like no junior
high boy ever did.
The dream starts
young.
I wore a khaki
straight skirt,
my first,
which my mother
had made for me
with an ivy
league buckle
on the back.
We were on our
way to Arizona,
preparing to move
for my mother’s
helath, on last
ditch effort to
save her life.
I had to stop[
at the seamstress’
house on the way,
so that I could
take the skirt.

My cousin compli-
mented me
on it. She was
a cousin by marriage,
of course.
And knew, I’m sure
the whole sad tale.
The move.
The skirt.

But she was that
way, the one who
forgave me
for chewing erasers
from the pencil tip, who laughed
in a way people
in my famialy
never did.
A married cousin
I always wrote
to her after
they moved
out West,
& before we had.

She died young.
I had stopped
writing by then.
They came to visit
once when I was
grown, & as I watched
her chase my daughter
around the house
I knew how right
I’d been.

I think she was
the only one
who complimented me
on the skirt.
which was as
powerful as clothes
always are.
I knew it would
change something
though I did not
know
exactly what.

7/6/99