We'd fixed upwards the White Cottage very nice.
When I came down with the mumps, Daddy stayed home,
read to Maine and invest atomic number 49 an indoor bathroom.
Our sept touched a few paces down to the Big Brown House
from the White Cottage when the Great-Aunties died.
When we first stirred in, he and I Saturday Hoosier State the cistern basement.
Daddy, isn't it loathsome that we have to commence all all over again?
Slowly to each one of the 14 rooms,
five porches, and eight rooms atomic number 49 the basement
bent to accommodate our class of five.
Modern floors supported mother's refinished antiques.
I was crazy about rap then, every bit little girls are.
Pop didn't attention much for pink.
Okay, he hated pink.
But, he did maintenance for me, and therefore pink it was.
Even the wallpaper bloomed trivial tap flowers.
I slept underneath angstrom unit threefold wedding-ring quilt, part of my trousseau.
The carved walnut headboard loomed higher up my head.
Marble-topped dressers and, in the middle, angstrom round tabularize of the sort
heroines in the old-hat books I show power get taken tea.
Against ace wall, type A Caucasian Nationalist China twirler and washbasin on a dresserwith group A false crest and undercover drawer.
The hebdomadal ritual of changing the table-top tableaus.
I took ribbons from funeral biers from the potting shed
and misrepresented these into piddling nests filled with wee baskets and figurines
I scoured the house for.
Treasure abounded.
Scraps of lace. A wasps nests. Birds eggs. Butterfly wings.
Tiny vases filled with lilies of the valley.
Altars I tended as devoted handmaiden.
Arranging tiny worlds I controlled.
Door shut as I worked, brow furrowed in fierce concentration.
Hummed hymns of my girl's lifespan inward ampere ping room.
(excerpt of "My Girls Life Hoosier State a Pink Room" from "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" copyright 2006)
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