Picking Up Shiny Things

Frankly

These things begin so slyly.
I felt in my walk first.
Seems I sashayed to the mailbox,
strolled like someone in a blue peignoir,
thirty yards of French silk velvet
heavily trimmed in black fox fur.
The smell of magnolias weighted the air
somehow conjured from cedars and fresh cut Bermuda.

I wanted to be laced up, tight and slender,
and sit on the porch I did not have,
surrounded by prissy men.
I would envy their soft hands,
their lazy, syrupy voices that pooled
in my head, warm and numbing.
Later the curtains began to look like frocks.
As I yanked them down
I smelled the inevitable perfume
of a city on fire.