it's kindergarten and she's just a little girl. 
she reluctantly unlatches from her mother,
who had laid out a flower-print jumper 
onto a white, fluffy bed that morning and said,
"today's a special day, sweet angel."

and the little girl had protested with big blue tears,
staining the rosy dimples that puckered below her eyes.
her mother smoothed the dress and declared:
"you'll be okay. i'll never leave you, i promise."
and so she remembered her mother's words.
as little as she was, she felt the good in them.

it's high school now and things are different.
mom left to see paris and the pyramids
and to write about them in quiet cafes. 
dad became a lawyer in a black suit who suddenly decided 
that the meaning of life could be found in business lunches.

so the little girl sits alone in the dining room at night 
to study the family portrait, 
submersed in the irony of its tilted mount
and perplexed as to how her house's big walls
could suddenly become so suffocating.

on the weekends, she puts on a varying dress
that exposes her back and accents her collar bones
and goes to the same parties
because the loud music drowns the pulsing thoughts.
the sticky drink in her cup lingers like acid on her pink lips,
but it warms her like nothing will.

pretty boys with cooing voices sit next to her on the couch.
they try to snake their arm around her 
and sometimes she lets them with a demeanor so apathetic
that she feels invincible,
relishing in being detached and desired all at the same time.

she asks him what he wants in life
after they slipped out of the crowded hallway,
after fifteen minutes of clutching his hips in a dark room,
only to sigh at his muddled answer and confounded smirk
that further illuminated his lack of substance.

she then drove home, 
past curfew and past caring, 
climbed into the same fluffy bed,
and cried big blue kindergarten tears
that oozed the transparency of her mother's words