American Girls

At the soda fountain, a row of girls and dolls

with combed hair and clear eyes

sip pink frappes from pink straws,

their perfect pink lips mining sweetness.

We stand a little apart, doll-less

and spent after a day of school shopping.

It’s hard not to touch things.

The endless outfits and boxes of bitty babies,

the flip-flop rainbows and the sleds

complete with matching dogs. Above us,

mothers wait while their daughters

stand by their charges, watching silently

as scissors trim bangs and clip

stray curls. Further from reality,

attendants paint miniature decals

on pastel nails and apply sticky lip gloss.

Further still, a nervous child

fills out an admissions form

as her look-alike on crutches

dozes in a distant chair.

I suppose we’ll never know

how it feels to play at any life we want—

fantasy safe inside affluence’s glass—

but it doesn’t matter.

We embrace the rumpled air as we step out again

into the fine, flawed world.