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My little sister cried last
night
and all I could do was get my shoulder wet
because I'm not good at these sort of things.
Why can't I be good at this?
Why can't I comfort an aged soul
that lies behind a facade of thirteen-year-old
skin?
And I watch
as they close the playground
that encased the hopes and dreams of every juvenile grain of
sand that glimmered infinitely in the worn red sand
box.
I watch
as the wrought-iron gates swing shut
and obliterate the sunshine and dime store goggles
transforming childhood into cold metal and
graffiti.
And mine eyes have seen the
glory
of the Styrofoam souls of urban angels impaling themselves
on the barbed wire strewn across every day
innocence.
I close the blinds.
It's not time yet.
It's not time to trade in pigtails
and cotton-candy smiles for black cotton dresses
and funeral eulogies
Death has come to Candyland
and a roll of perfect six will not permit safe passage to
Gumdrop land any longer.
We've sold our souls for a Faustian
bet on beauty
and a thirteen-year-old girl lies dead
as our frozen soulless ante.
Innocence is in critical condition.
And I refuse,
I repeat refuse
to accept the mental weeding out of girls
who can't fit into a match-stick Kate Moss size 2 dress
as the status quo of Darwinian evolutionary society
because as Dylan Thomas wrote so elegantly (I pale),
"We must rage against the dying of the light," and
folks,
this is our
nightfall.
When a thirteen-year-old girl
is so ingrained with our collective
insecurity that she will never feel the sun
San Christen her still moist with dew,
chrysalis wings
ever again.
We must teach our children they are
beautiful
for Mandy's sake.
Copyright EPB,
1995
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