was a lace blouse with a pussy bow
that was two sizes too big and a brown velvet skirt
that was three, both from my mother’s closet

safety pinned, not altered, so i looked like a cross
between a diapered baby and the front
desk receptionist at a whorehouse

and it never occurred to me once
to ask could i have a new dress
i was a beggar not a chooser except

i didn’t beg i was a girl surrounded
by boulders like Stonehenge but without
any space between the rocks

so i didn’t push just sat down
cross legged and picked clover
everything was an is

and you can’t change what is
so you just stay inside the locked cabinet of it
breathing the air you can breathe

once later i stupidly told my parents
that desperate to get the baby
to go to sleep one midnight

i had taken her in her car seat for a drive
and she did fall asleep and we came home —
my parents sat down facing me

like parole officers slowly
reminding me that my father
was a shrink and he could

lock me up and take the baby
if i did anything else crazy
and you know what? i didn’t

tell my husband about that
until twenty years later
just sat there like a little ship

constructed in a bottle
which of course
can’t/doesn’t miss water