Rachel Mehl

in a way I imagine my mother was in her 20s.

Her hair is so black it shines blue.

I am on my third Miller Light at Mitzel’s,

next to the hotel where we sleep.

We are learning how to teach I statements,

to ask: who what when where, before teens go out,

and the musts of the family meeting.

Kristin is a Pisces; she drinks chardonnay.

Her dad is a doctor, an expert on the heart.

I tell her I now love a man like I never thought I would

when my marriage flopped in my 24^th year.

She says if I need a wedding dress she has an extra,

it is tight down the thigh but flares at the calf.

If she grew up in my town she would have lived

in Glen Eagle.  In the evenings the families sat around

big-screen TVs in clean living rooms.

I watched them from my neighbor’s station wagon

while she delivered Avon.  I would have ridden with her all night

just to see what normal looked like through panes of glass.

Posted 04/22/09

was first in Poet Lore