The Shut Eyed

parasols were the antidote to all of her sadness

she was born in the wrong year;

when everything she loved was the zeitgeist of another band

and her thoughts were of rose and pistachio paillettes

she skated along the sidewalks a melody in one ear and out the other

and thoughts of brownstones she would live in when she got older

and of a life that looked like Lady and the Tramp

sinking in the covers and looking at the outfit hanging over the door

all the smiling was keeping her from sleep

and she stared at her hands,

hoping one day they would be weightless and made of piano fingers

in the first shade of dawn,

she would dance down the arrondissement,

looking up at the promise of the grand collision of the foreign sky

and all the buildings that would one day belong to her