Читать книгу Confessions of a Barefaced Woman - Allison Joseph - Страница 15

How could I forget

your cruel, inflexible soles,

chunky, stacked heels

pitching me forward to wobble

like those Fisher-Price dolls

that didn’t fall down,

ankle straps burning

into tender skin, leaving

red welts that softened to scars

days later? The heel cups

flayed skin, left blisters,

forced me to walk funny,

to limp and weep at my first

boy-girl party, a sixth-grade

graduation celebration.

How eagerly I’d awaited

your coming, pleased

when Mother let me choose you

from a mail order catalog’s

pages, how stylish you looked

there—beige to match

my party dress, 2 ½ inches high

to make me tall, slim,

give me legs and calves

to make the other girls go home.

But what looked beige

on the page looked yellowed

on my feet, what looked sexy

in photos made my legs

into stalks, feet into boats.

So I didn’t dance with that boy

who’d been hitting me all year,

or walk to the table loaded

with cake, chips, punch.

I sat, hard plastic chair

under my flat rear,

flower in my hair losing

each petal, toes jammed together,

barely peeking from the hole

at the tip of each sorry shoe.