THE DOLL OF POCELAIN SKIN:

There once was a doll of porcelain skin
Born in a world of malicious intent
Fair, graceful and kind she was to her kin
Yet cruel pain was all she got in extent

Though as righteous as she seemed she was not
For scars lay under her porcelain skin
Yes, deep ugly scars of torture and rot
That tainted her smiles in angst and sin

The ache was so bad she let the mask slip
and let them see the face that lied within
The hideous visage that was bound to tip
The truth that would break her porcelain skin

They called her vicious and asked why she changed
When the facade was all she disaranged

Leeza, Lisa’s 14-year-old little sister, is anxious about the first day of school. She didn’t tell me that, I’m not sure 14-year-olds talk anymore.

Now that I’m almost 21, I can roll my eyes, like everyone else, and say, “Teenagers.”

Leeza’s a jingli, all-angles, taller than I am (when did THAT happen),
redhead who’s fast becoming a Lisa-like beauty.

School starts, for her, in 11 days and every piece of clothing she owns is draped across the furniture in her room or the floor, as she organizes her skool outfits.

There’s a pile of rejected apparel in one corner - the outcasts -
and a stack of magazine cutouts showing the clothes she plans to buy.

I wandered into her room that afternoon and she watched
me suspiciously, like I might steal her nonexistent baby.

“These might go together,” I said, holding up a top and skirt as a combo.
She winced, involuntarily, as if exposed to something distasteful.

Apparently, I’m getting old and my teen-taste is attenuated or worse yet - past its expiration date.
.
.
A song for this:
Houdini by Eminem [E]
Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

Our hot girl summer rolls on - like lava downhill or male models doing - anything.
We’re in Athens, Georgia, yes, it’s hotter elsewhere - but you can die in the sun - is this really a competition?

Fashionistas and trendsetters are adorning themselves in fluorescent lime green this summer. Making it the must-have statement color for the cool kid's club. The whole aesthetic was inspired by Charli XCX’s lime-green album cover for ‘Brat.’

Now, before you roll your eyes at the state of America, where silly people are bilked by influencers - isn't that what happened in the 60s with ‘flower-power?’ Wasn’t that ‘counterculture’ flagging, where everything from school buses to bikinis were flower adorned, driven by bands like the Beatles and umm.. [fill in the blank]?

So, we tripped (sounded psychedelic) to the mall of Georgia, to shop for unnecessary, lime-green things. Nail polish (which I think eats), beach bags, coverups, Crocs, friendship bracelets (cause we’re 13-year-olds), Cinnabon's - which aren’t technically green but are delicious and the Apple store - because it makes us happy.

I’ve read, or heard it said that “malls are dying.” Not this one, on a weekday mid-morning it was packed. The line for the eighteen-movie-plex looked like Spring Festival (Chinese New Years) at the Beijing airport.

Sadly, it’s time to admit that as 20-year-olds we’ve aged out of the “Clare’s” esthetic. A 12-year-old in line to get her ears pierced, looked at me, while I was looking at friendship bracelets, like I was her grandmother and I felt it - it was real.
.
.
Two songs to go with this:
This Girl's In Love (Live At HMH) by Trijntje Oosterhuis
Riviera Life by Caro Emerald

i never knew i could write a love poem
until you walked by my side,
past 2 am
keeping an eye out
for drunken goons
while you maintained
your distance

and, perhaps,
you holding back
the urge to share another story
With a silly smile
at a corner store
just adds to why
i thought i could write this one

Because, you see,
I have been used to writing lines
along the streams of tears
And had known no voice
other than shame and fear
Until you held my hand
lightly that night

It was as if i could write a love poem
in a breeze
Penned with every letter of your name
As you walked by my side,
past 3 am
Slowly hoping for you
to close the distance.

I’ve got it - woot!  Well, we’ve (Lisa and I) have it. The Covid.
After living carefully serpentine lives - for the last half decade - we both have it.

Lisa started feeling ***** Friday night, after work. Saturday she had some sniffles and we both took Covid tests, coming up positive. By Saturday evening, Lisa was laid-low and looked a flu-like death warmed over. I am asymptomatic, not a cough or a sneeze, although I do feel some fatigue and an occasional little dizziness.

“I hate you,” she said, in a moment of clarity and focus. I think it’s a temporary, fever-driven hatred - but time will tell.

Charles, our escort and consigliere, who goes everywhere we go, didn’t catch it. He’s become our designated shopper. When I asked Lisa if she wanted anything she said, “Orange juice and mango gelato.” Twenty minutes later, Charles handed me (masked and gloved through a door crack) two bags - one contained a large, extra-pulp orange juice, the other had a $70 selection of various ice creams, gelatos and ice cream sandwiches (the receipt was still in the bag.)

Saturday night, I texted my mom, who’s spending yet another summer overseas with “Doctors Without Borders.” She Face Timed me not two minutes later, from somewhere in Poland, or Ukraine - 4,170 miles away - and after checking I was ok - delivered what I think of as “family infectious disease lecture #17, full of “If you’re going to be a doctors” and “You know betters.” I love technology.

My sister Annick, a doctor herself, was knocking at our (her) door twenty minutes later. She gave us both mini-physicals and left a list of things to periodically check (like blood-oxygen levels) as well as two boxes of Paxlovid, “Do NOT take this unless or until I tell you to.”
We all have Apple watches and are now walkie-talkie connected for even more instant communication.

Rebecca, my fellowship surgeon, was, of course, very sympathetic and supportive when I told her but displayed a careful, verbal, clinical distance - addressing me as “Mz Vionet” once - instead of her usual “Anais” or the even more usual “excuse me.”

I’ve been promoted to nurse, cook and bottle washer - but the ice cream, topped with a little Bailey’s Irish liqueur, is spectacular.

Anyway, here we are. We’ve finally joined the Covid parade. I guess Covid isn’t over after all.

Canada is afire and I’m confused, shouldn’t the snow put that out?

The Boston sky is an interesting shade of mustard yellow,
and there’s a pale orange haze where the sun should be.

Lisa, drowsily asleep-walked into the kitchen for her morning coffee.
“So this is Mars,” I observed, “Elon Musk will be so jealous.”
“Good,” Lisa said, “I was afraid it was nuclear winter.”
“There’ll be no breathing today.” I updogged.

We could almost hear the slow, delicate pitter-patter fall of micro-ash.

“There’s aaaa bright golden haze over Boston..” Lisa began to sing softly.
Lisa knows every Broadway score and can easily interpolate a song into every conversation.

Teens in the school yard


like to play with the soft ***** --



of being in love.

I'm like a Vulcan when you aren't around - logical, distant, evaluating you like a product with my friends. The consumer with a lifetime of buying.

But near you I’m a prisoner of some consciousness independent of thought, like a fever or the dreamer, with the merest semblance of control.

You are light and loose, hair like Spanish moss and skin like cedar resin, all laughter and agonizing beauty. The way you lean across the table I only think of kissing you.

I'm sure at times it must show, like a red stain on a white dress or some inconvenient *******..

You have some license on me, a key to a place in me I keep hidden and close, you fit some interior template of desire.

What good is freedom if I can't tell you!!?

Oh, the ragged vagaries of loves games. 1000 emotions and I am deserted to silence by some rule of thumb - by a faltering consumer confidence or some feeling of inward nakedness - when all I want in the world is an open kiss or to give you an intimate scented something...

Midterms are over and I killed ‘em (yes, even the physics) - yeah me!
I spent the last two weeks like prisoners do, marking off days until - freedom. Now the pressure’s off and I can chill. Spring break starts tomorrow, and I have NO plans.

It’s dinnertime and we’re (Leong, Sunny, Lisa and I) in the Commons dining hall, celebrating, with bacon-cheeseburgers and fries (Leong’s a cheeseburger ******).

Lisa Turned to Sunny, “What songs are playing in your ears today?”
“I’m looping "Good Riddance" by Gracie Abrams - which might be a little gay for you.”
“Sunny and I were discussing that earlier,” I chirped in, “especially ‘Amalie’ (the song).”
“Gracie’s not dating that guy anymore? Lisa asked.
“She broke up with him,” Sunny said.
“again?” Lisa gasped.
“Yeah, she broke up with him for good, a few months ago,” Sunny reported.
“I thought that they got back together.” I said, trying to remember my Teen Vogue gossip.
“Nope,” Leong said, stealing one of my fries, “saw it on ‘the shade’ (theshaderoom)”
“Wait, wait, Blake Slatkin - or a new boy?” Lisa asked, holding up her hand like we’re in class.
Sunny laughs, “Anyway, Gracie isn’t dating a girl but in that ‘Amalie’ song she’s like, ‘where did you go Amalie, I’m crushing on you.”
“Amalie..” Leong said, searching for a last name.
“Amalie Homin,” I said, “That’s what I heard, but I don’t know it on my own.”

“Ooo!” Lisa said, “Speaking of carols,” and nodding towards the main entrance. Leong and I had our backs to the door, but we swiveled discreetly as a girl I’ll call “Monique” (I’m not doxing anyone) walked in with a group of her entourage-like friends.

My roommates and I, being young, single and curious girls - have ongoing chaz or chaste debates - where we judge people (quietly, in a non-mean-girl way, amongst ourselves), to be either chaz or chaste - based on their general *** appeal, style and swagger.

A chaz is a playa’, someone who everyone wants (sexually) and who’s probably “sactive” - a chaste, is a wannabee, a poser who’s trying hard but is probably “involuntarily abstinent.”

A big, beefy, but not overly attractive football player would draw a “chaste,” “chaste,” “chaste,” while, say, a tall, dark, handsome physicist would earn a “chaz,” “chaz,” “chaz!!”

Monique, who’s studying marketing (school of business), is an over-tha-bridge black girl from Jamaica who was once in a band that had some low-level success. As we watched her strut across the room, I brought the question to Sunny. Monique’s fem-facing, as is Sunny, so Sunny’s the expert on-hand, “Do you think Monique’s a chaz?”

I state my case, talking softly, “Monique walks around campus wearing a t-shirt with her own picture on it, under a blazer,” I snigger, derogatorily, “being like, all these ******* want me.”

Sunny gasps, “How DARE you call smart, modern, lesbian women *******!” She laughs.

“All these lovely ladies, these rad, sapphic-gals really want me.” I amended. “It’s farcical, isn’t it? I repeated, fashion aghast. “Wearing a t-shirt with your own picture on it - like you’re a rockstar.” I put the ultimate question to Sunny: “Is she actually pulling any veejay like that?”

“You doubt she’s pulling any strong, empowered women?” Sunny asked back rhetorically. Sunny rolled the question over in her mind and declared, shrugging, “She’s a chaz. It works - for the gays, hundo-p."

“Hard to believe,” I admitted, shrugging in the face of Monique’s sheer tackiness. We watched the strange group leave, loaded down with goodies, like pirates who came and looted the area.