Little golden haired girl that skips down wooden stairs,
Her pigtails swing in the air as she lands on the sidewalk
Where I used to bury acrid smolders of my cigarette sticks
And laugh with the rabbit toothed woman who coughed too much.
I breathed smoke from her yellow teeth but now the girl,
With rosy cheeks and beady eyes jumps over puddles in yellow boots
She glances with red cheeks and falls face first into brown muck,
To be held up by a man who walks, talks and looks
Nothing like me.

In the cold nights of winter the girl, the woman and the man
Melt themselves in each other’s warmth, I stand alone
Behind their window rubbing my red chest,
Flirt with myself to knock, to go inside
and slice the apple pie and slurp the eggnog.
My fingers immobile, short fragile icicles
But the black beady eyes pierce through pane,
A wide smile with missing teeth calls out
To hold a gaze through  watering eyes.
They see her as an old photograph
Of the woman who would run her  fingers
through knots of hair as I cried on her lap.
I press frozen hands against the glass,
Peer into flickers of those dark gleamy eyes  
And see the mother and daughter walk on sand
with naked feet
and me,
hand in hand.