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In Her Thirteenth Year<br />
Karen Douglass<br />
She never mastered pin curls, but she bled<br />
and borrowed lipstick at school, got caught,<br />
outgrew her training bra, imagined<br />
that she was scullery maid to a mad queen,<br />
At thirteen, she shouted four younger<br />
brothers and sisters up to bed while<br />
her stepmother went next door<br />
to smoke and play cards. Our girl<br />
studied starch and steam ironed<br />
her father’s white shirts—woman’s work.<br />
Friday night she swept, scrubbed<br />
with pail and rag, waxed white linoleum.<br />
<strong>The</strong> next Friday and the next Friday<br />
she found no frog with great potential, only<br />
spilled red sauce and the smell of floor wax.<br />
Upstairs those giggling kids refused to sleep.<br />
She dreamed away her free hours in a field<br />
of gladioli, brazen as forbidden girlfriends<br />
with laughter and makeup on their faces,<br />
trailed her fingers through the silky mouths<br />
of open milkweed pods. Kissed her pillow.<br />
But the wax was real. <strong>The</strong>re was always<br />
that linoleum. Had she dared, she would<br />
have danced naked on the ceiling.<br />
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