“She’s next door to a perfect heathen.”
~Marilla Cuthbert, Anne of Green Gables
Aggy, her string hair
a mired nest of broken
twigs plastered across rosewinter cheeks
on which snowflakes make port,
then melt in her warmth.
We perch in a pavilion, eyeing the fenced-in zoo
where kangaroos embrace in a dance named “sex.”
Giggles mist the air; boots carve craters, a path
of crunching snow, till our hands claw
beams of steel-fence. Between our fingers
now blossomed with frost: the barricade that severs
us from them. We gawk, spellbound by mating
creatures– the kangaroos keep
dancing.
Aggy, she remembers my birthday with care:
plush turtle in needle-jabbed grasp,
each stitch a graft of herself. Patchwork
careful like her: surgeon, seamstress, vet.
It’s the first I’ve seen
a turtle shell go soft.
Aggy, she sews my prom gown
from nothingness: a ruby thing,
creamy silk like a ravine of wine
we can’t drink but it hugs
my body just right. I wave a crinkled bill–
an offering– hair waltzes along
her cheeks as she declines,
She says save me just one
dance.
Aggy, when my hands clasp
and eyes shut for a second
before our mouths flood with her mom’s
caramels–it’s no meal but it needs thanks–
she asks me what my God is.
My words falter, but Aggy understands
my God better:
Refusal of a worthless bill, for the promise of a
dance.
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