Grey Fantasy: I Felt Ill–at ease in a suit, really?

A woman poses in front of a mirror in Hugo Boss

wool-blended, sharply tailored with trousers (not pants)

A ten-year-old girl stands on the other side of the mirror

She prefers riding swings at Booth Park

and catching crayfish in Nu’uanu Stream

Afterwards she’s polka-dotted a Mercurochrome red

Her legs can’t scoop blue skies and pump them behind her

while wearing these pants (trousers)

And she’s really really sorry for all the crayfish she tried to keep alive

in the Folgers’ coffee can

Even when everyone said, They not going make it

They (grown ups) lost their reds when their backs became fuzzy

and brownish and then a somewhat white

Dabbing them with tonic only made the water red and angry

Maybe if she could go back to Nu’uanu Stream

incant and release all the crayfish’s tiny souls:

before leptospirosis washed away her dreams

of taking her children’s children there

before dog kennel washings

before invading black fish

before it became never again

All thoughts evaporated as the woman slipped her arm in a red Armani

virgin wool, notched collar, with (flap) pockets