
08-21-2009, 03:40 PM
This was part of a lengthy assignment for an essay writing class I took last semester.
Pipe Dream
The woman is smiling
Into the baby's face as one pudgy, frosting-smeared hand
Twines itself into her bottle-blonde hair.
This is before her neck will swell
with cheap drugstore cabernet and Smirnoff, before
her chin will droop,
Before the baby's eight-year-old eyes well up
to the crash of a Tiffany lamp,
the stink of booze,
the nightmare of police sirens and lights in primary colors, exploding
into the night like bottle rockets.
"My childhood
Was drowned in a snuff film of vodka and cigarettes."
Before the baby, two decades old,
Sits scribbling on a legal pad, hunched over the cold Formica
At one in the afternoon.
"She did this to herself."
But unlike her mother,
Her makeup will not run.
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