Some things were just for other girls,
girls whose mothers didn’t see a pair
of thigh-high raspberry suede boots

as a sign of more than just a rousing
sense of fashion. Some things
disappeared without discussion,

just migrated silently from my closet
to the trash can. The mini skirt borrowed
from my much shorter friend Carol

never made its way back to her again.
The day after I wore it to school,
my mother burned it in the backyard,

stoking the fire with pages torn
from paperback James Bonds.
That confusing scene in Doctor No,

where Bond bites the fleshy place
at the base of some woman’s thumb,
torched before I could make sense of it,

along with the February issue
of Photoplay Magazine and its
full-color, six-page glossy spread —

Natalie Wood as Miss Gypsy Rose Lee,
feather boas barely concealing
what her mother hadn’t taught her to hide.

© by Pat Hale.
Used with the author’s permission.