Shawn L. Bird

On this day

I remember a ghost anniversary,

the day in 1976

when my sister was married.

My 12 year old figure was

encased in my mother’s girdle

beneath a hideous rust bridesmaid gown.

I sported a new Vidal Sasoon bob,

felt bold and grown up with

my uni-brow plucked.

I remember my father’s scowl

when a groomsman with waist length hair

obeying rattling spoons, bent to kiss me,

and the resulting blush.

The marriage lasted four years.

My daughter wore the hideous dress

when she was twelve.

She called herself a princess;

rust suits her.

Too bad my sister

never saw it.

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.

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You know, that whole girdle thing is really weird.  I was not a pudgy child by any reckoning.  I probably weighed about 95 lbs around the time of this wedding.  I recall it was my idea, so I must have been self-conscious of a little paunch, which at 12, was not paunch at all.  Very strange how girls are, isn’t it?

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I looked for the wedding photos in the album, but it looks like I took them out of those photo eating ‘magnetic’ glued albums, and who knows where I put them.  Sorry!