The Book Handed Her

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Wanting to be one of twelve princesses 
to disappear down a trap door 
underneath her bed each night 
and dance to weariness in a haunted place 

or to sit in the swing in the cottonwoods,
hear the rope crack 
but keep going higher, higher 
for the thrill of it, 

but she remembers baths in an oblong, tin tub
brought in from a cellar house, 
chairs encircling what she wished 
were a silver throne, 
towels carefully draped 
so she could crouch behind. 

Her first trip with her father 
on his grocery run to the city, 
the swift morning she had to dress 
with him in the same hotel room. 

The book handed her, 
Being Born, she and Madge repulsed, 
their drawn-out talks, 
how they wished for another way, 
couldn’t imagine the neighbors 
or their parents doing that.

When Gram pricked her finger 
on the curtain stretchers 
as she pulled from one end, 
the red stain on white lace 
became a revelation —Gram, too. 

On long, lonely rides in the back seat 
of the green Oldsmobile 
she’d stare at each house 
as if it were a dark cellar, 
her thoughts a vacuous, 
tight-lipped bedroom. 

How it tasted —being a woman, 
not her tongue on a cinnamon stick 
but the first try of green olives, 
red pimento stuffed inside.