Tiny triangles on stitched Lycra strings
tremble in the breeze
of a nearby rack
whooshing with moving hangers.
I lean in closer to confirm if these
are meant for human girls —
or for their American Girl Dolls.
The teeny bits of fabric dance on the rod
in lime green seersucker
in gold lamé
on seashell-adorned straps
that meet swirls of cerulean, Kelly green
and optic white à la Pucci
(Not that this set would get that reference).
The racks burst with feigned abundance,
‘til I lean in to decipher the tags:
XXS
XXS
XS
XXS
XS
XS
XS
XXS
I sift through the available stock
with increasing urgency:
XXS
XS
XXS
S
S
S
S
XXS
XL.
The sparse sizing
feels like a code
I can’t crack to a joke that
I’m increasingly suspecting is on me.
None of these suits will suit her.
Maybe thirteen year-olds can go topless?
Ugh.
I turn to the coordinates section,
Boldly proclaiming their identity as:
“Bottoms!”
With the exclamation and all.
Here I find high V bikinis that threaten
to turn into a thong upon pulling up, up, up
over bike versus asphalt accident-scarred kneecaps.
Nope, I think.
I turn my attention to a spaghetti mess
of tangled string loin cloths.
Before I can edit myself I exclaim:
“Your Dad would die a million deaths
if he saw you in this. We can’t cause a heart attack.”
Luckily for all three of us,
these also come in the inhospitable Xs
on either end of the wide bell curve
of women’s straight sizes.
No need to argue;
even she knows
there’s none in front of us
that would not fall off or fight to go on.
It’s her waning moments of being twelve
And this came so soon.
I can still feel her roundhouse kicking my spleen.
And now I’m here
casting a long shadow
in fluorescent hellscapes
of a man's making
helping her find infinitesimal isosceles
to adorn her not so baby body.
And something inside me trembles
like the bits of cloth
on a string
on a rod
in the mall
and I find myself carrying
the bits of social signalling
to the cashier
and charging the lot on my watch
and putting the miniscule items
in the massive bag
that I've just been upsold on
for a dollar.
This is twelve
on the cusp of thirteen
and I'm not sure what's next
in the geometry of life
but I do know it involves
smaller clothing
and pricier hang tags.
