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Posts Tagged ‘barbie’

That’s Right

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 13, 2026| 2 Comments »


                  for Vivian
 
 
When you’re not here
I still say the things
only you understand—
Right … Right …
I said last night to an empty room. 
If you were here, you would
have said in unison with me
Right as always, Barbie.
As it is, I said the words myself,
then laughed, then felt 
in my chest the sharp pinch
of you not being here,
a sharp pinch that unfurls
into a petal soft awareness
that you are grown and gone
and it’s something so wanted
but no less hard. 
When you’re not here, 
you are still so here, even 
when it feels wrong, right? 
You live in a here far away 
at the same time you live here
in my thoughts, 
here in this empty room
where I don’t hear you say, 
Right, right as always. 
 

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Two Stories We Didn’t Hear

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 14, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

Barbie:

 

 

They never asked if I wanted to be famous. They just said everyone would love me. What did I know of everyone? That meant my mother and father and grandparents. Oh, and Ken, of course. I didn’t know it meant millions of girls and boys in millions of homes. I never knew that when everyone loves you it means that they also hate you. I’d never heard the word effigy. The burns, the mutilations, the parodies. Don’t think it hurts me any less than anyone else. There was a time I was a girl who wanted only to be loved. Sometimes at night, I remember her.

 

 

The Amazon:

 

Yeah, you try walking barefoot in the jungle. All I want is a pair of Adidas with some thick white athletic socks. And a pair of sweat pants so the mosquitoes don’t bite at my ankles and thighs. And a sun hat. And hey, a book. There was a time when I saw a girl reading at the edge of the jungle. She sat beneath the tree. She sat and sat and sat and sat and turned the pages one after the other. She didn’t move for a whole afternoon. I stalked her but did not pounce. She never knew I was there. I watched her from behind the fern, heard her weeping, heard her laugh. She laughed until she dropped the book. I stole it when she took a nap, but the marks on the page meant nothing to me. Before she knew it was gone, I put it back. I left it open to the picture of me.

 

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