Woman Little girl in a frilly party dress Gleaming patent-leather pointy-toed shoes Shiny ringlets bouncing on my head Mama carefully winds them around her fingers And she calls them "banana curls" Only two rooms in that house for five people Just a kitchen and a room where we all sleep Take a bath in a washtub in the middle of the floor Same one Mama uses to scrub clothes on a washboard Hang those clothes out on a line In the hot Arizona sun or freezing wind Outhouse on the side of the hill Surrounded by juniper trees, rocks, dirt and weeds A little trail leads from the house Scary to go out there after dark Cobwebs and stink in the hot summer day Daddy's toolshed and an old root cellar Places we are scared to go He calls big sister to the shed She comes out crying every time I never knew then why I had my own dark secret shame Whenever he had the chance Teenage girls are leaving early From that sad and angry house I never finished high school Honor roll grades just don't matter Have to get away, to find another life Opt to become a poor railroader's wife Only lasts a little over a year Men, too many now to count them Always searching for a home, a reason Something elusive, some kind of dream But sweet,hot kisses in a darkened room Can make a girl forget for a little while Guilt and shame and psychic pain No way to make you understand Unless you have ever been there Loneliness is where it takes me Even after all thosegood years The family years, the baby years The feel-good all the time times Before the aging body Before useless introspection Loneliness has followed Like a shadow, clinging to me Lightly most of the time, but Coming back with a vengeance To claim me in my quiet moments Make me feel awkward, shy, odd The periphery of life affords me A kind of wary anonymity While the child's voice Inside the woman Sings of pain and of joy and of hope. Poetry