Smiling the barbie doll,

smile

Plastic muscles lift up and collapse,

to her

sides

Pass someone unknown with a flash of white,

teeth

Practicing a manufactured,

script

Memorizing the taste with each sound coming

from pursed,

chapped,

lips


Waking in a tangle of fleece baby blankets filled with salty tears of the

bottom of the

ocean

Walk right, walk left making anyone with a

beating heart,

guess

Twinkling eyes filled with

wonder

looking into a moonlit sky say what would

barbie,

do


I speculate her under the

clearest

magnifying,

glass

Hoping the virus I

see will

rub onto

me

If I could just get one of those gratifying,

stares


A smile once, her mouth zipped

shut

Forever stuck

Gliding down a rocky road with leaves that say,

crunch

A pond is moving in the way, reflective in a way that it,

hurts

Plastic turns to mush, the once polished

skin

has burst out of the
seems