Then I Woke Up and Smelled the Perfume

Another poem from the archive. This was the first sonnet I ever wrote. Maybe it’s not a good sonnet, but still, it was the first sonnet I ever wrote. That has to count for something.

Your eyes are glue drops caked with pixie dust,
the ones you used to make me make “for fun.”
I hated that. I’d pick at Elmer’s crust
and wish some bullets for my plastic gun.
I’ve said before your mouth’s a double dutch
with smiles and frowns exchanged in girl-brain time.
I never got a word in edgewise much
except that Halloween you played the mime.
You know your hair’s like lakeweed thrown in rage.
(Not that you ever hit me, anyway.)
We’d fish and make up monsters—Pigtail-phage,
remember? Splash! A girl’s good bait, they say.
That’s how you used to be—my crucible.
But now…but how’d you get so beautiful?