Letting Go of a Little Girl’s Dream

She searches pink for jewelry keepers 

with a ballerina’s pirouette feature, 

possessing time with the pin drum. She hand-

cranks, and the tiny dancer’s wax-like face wanes 

in the distorted mirror that mocks at her, 

unfairest one of all: “Little girl,” as it were, 

“dreams of having little girls.” Her fixed stare breaks 

to shelved board games: the people pegs play fake                  

smiles on the cover of The Game of Life.

Six holes peg for family, pink and blue, wife

and husband. A baby’s coo wraps her fallow 

womb on unseen aisle before she shifts back now

to the dancer whose platform spring tilts and sticks–

“Girls” “Girls” “Girls” like a scratched prophecy. Transfixed, 

her eyes blur as she hears, “Something so broken 

can never be fixed” as the musak plays on.    

As a poetry assignment for one of my English graduate courses, we had to write heroic couplets (aabbcc end-rhyme), 16-22 lines of iambic pentameter.  The poem had to take place in a store; a toy store was one of those options.  At least three of the rhyming words had to have two syllables or more.  We had to compare the piped music in the store to something industrial for at least two lines.  We were given suggested words to use in the poem– fallow, indent, oil, and daffodil– of which I only used one.       

Note: As I strive to adhere to the strict guidelines of iambic pentameter, a true poet will see that I am still in the beginner stages of achieving such form, this being far from a final draft. 

Image from Google