What I Did During My Summer Vacation
The romance of a jealous little girl
boils down to certain habits
and expressions, a game to fill up
August days:
her two small hands
stuffing blossoms in-between
encyclopaedia pages,
or somewhere else, easier to find,
when she was feeling
risqué
(or would have been had she only
known how to pronounce it). And if
the bowls on their stems were too
full-bodied to be
preserved so neatly,
between the syrup
and sexual organs masquerading
as hairy hearts of gold --
if instead of drying into a memory
of scent, as planned,
the lovely heads flattened
askew, or worse, cracked, and
stained paper with their unsweetened
vegetable smell -- well, what of it?
Such failures were good practice for life,
when she would need to know how to
invent small torments,
and wash the embarrassments
out from under her finger-nails
as easily as sap.
