It Was The Year Circus Came To Town
It was the year Circus came to town
and girls her age
were learning to shape
their naked hearts
into ungainly pouts
Covertly, she’d pinch her cheeks
into a vermilion blush
Her flat chest sprouted
with a curl of socks shoved
into her clinging camisole
A distant desire of womanhood
Presses against her boyish mold
For just a moment
Doubt sinks in her furrowed brows
Only to spring up hopeful, high and long
in the comic timing of a startled clown
She’d parade around in starry knickers
Exchanging her cotton-candy dreams
Just as schemed
in scrapbook stickers
And if a boy she hated
Kissed her without consent
She’d swipe her mouth in vain amend
to shrug away
the smoky cinder of his breaths
Her cheeks would soon singe
Broken into a violent burst of hives
Friends gruff with sympathy
Would cover her secret in alibis —
A food allergy is what it popularly went by
She couldn’t tell you
How many panic pills she swallowed with milk
She couldn’t tell you
if the pickling of her cheek ever did wilt
What she could tell you -
It was the year Circus came to town.
