He tells me I could get a boyfriend
if I spoke in my bad British accent.
It's very illegitimate.
I've only ever been to Heathrow,
I have no idea what dialect it is.
But he still says it's ****.

It would catch attention, I'm sure.
Interest from long haired hipster boys
Maybe the occasional "Oh, are you from England?"
And I could fib and say yes,
because the average American can't hear the difference
between a girl imitating Masterpiece Classic and Keeping Up Appearances,
and a true born Bristolian or Brummie.

"You're sure to get a man," he says.
'But I don't want one.' I think in reply.
I think he really just wants to know
if I am considering replacing his memory.
"Not yet Govn'a," I say in my best Cockney.
Not yet.

Sparrows land on the telephone lines,
tiny scaled feet feeling the vibrations
of clumsy human speech
coursing through the connections beneath.
Come, tiny sparrow, nest in my hands.
My palms were hollowed to fit your wings,
My fingers poised to feel your heart
beat within the down breast.
I rejoice in finding something so beautifully real,
Authentic in your wanderings, your songs.
If only I could be half so truthful.

I am a paradoxical mix of vanity and self-hate.
I will catch my reflection,
caught in the lure of my own eyes,
wide, dark olive drab, soulful, some might say.
The full lips, naturally red.
Slender limbs, well made.

The next moment,
I am all acne scarred skin, pock marks,
tiny *******, weak chin, critiquing the weight my bones carry,
tracing through every thing I've eaten that day,
decided, on a biased scale, if it was too much,
and how much work
will be needed to take it off.

The dichotomy of beauty and ugliness,
each raising separate voices
within the same body.
Both deadly sins, in their own right.
My mind reminds me, I am more than body,
I am also a soul,
but my body if fond of stifling it.

And we never stop being girls at heart.
Even at 80, in the nursing home bathroom mirror,
I will probably stop
and stare, at the parchment-faced woman,
with wrinkled cheeks and drooping eyes,
and wonder where the acne faced girl,
with bright round eyes,
has hidden herself away.
I will smile at the young, handsome, CNA
as he passes in the hall, wondering
what he would think of me at 18.

I still wonder at the beauty of my sister
and the flocks she will draw at 16
piles of phone numbers at her feet,
Psyche incarnate, I the strange sibling
no servant of cinders, she is exalted.
Not that I am unloved, but it is strange to see
how much the contrast shows in family portraits.

I think my grandmother is convinced
that my ovaries will shrivel up
if I do not find a man by summer.

She was married by 19,
and has always wanted great grandchildren
she loves buying baby things, children's toys.
Kindergarten is the golden age of life.
I did not date in highschool,
but if she saw me looking at a boy,
she asked if he was single,
and told me to ask him over for dinner.

When I hit University,
I found a sweet, mad, mess of a boy
and she was quiet,
but we went our separate ways,
she started up again.

Scheming, the unwanted matchmaker.
Asking if the piano player at church was single,
(he's four years younger than I)
and trying to arrange play-dates for me
with unwitting high school acquaintances.

She means well, I know,
but despite the hopeless Romanticism I harbor
I know I need time, (there are still open wounds),
to fall back in love with myself,
before trying to fall for someone else.