Cigarette dangling from her mouth
Bunny opened the door.
I thought she was cool.
Bunny was an enormous woman.

Bunny opened the door and grinned.
Her trailer had a dark heady smell.
Enormous, Bunny wore a strapless shiny polyester cheetah print jumpsuit,
gold high heels, gold hoop earrings, and gold bangles.

Her trailer smelled dark, heady, secret.
I wanted to go in, but M’s mother made us wait outside.
I told M I wanted gold high heels and that I couldn’t wait to get my ears pierced.
We poked sticks in the mud and pretended to be Davey and Mike, our favorite Monkees.

I wanted to see the mysterious darkness inside.
Dimly, we heard David Bowie singing about outer space.
We drew stars and moons in the mud,
stopped talking and listened—

We heard him cry – 5 years, that’s all we’ve got!
My head spun, that’s almost my whole life.
We stopped talking. For a minute
my stick, the stars, the mud and M disappeared.

The world spun and I was in the sky looking at my life.
I saw nothing but endless blue
no stick, no stars, no mud, no M, just blue—

and it was beautiful.

I saw something push through the edge of blue
when the smell of Bunny’s trailer hit me.
It was beautiful.
Glimmering purple haloed her eyes,

Bunny carried the smell of her trailer
when she stepped outside into the afternoon sun.
Shimmering eyes squinting,
she lit the cigarette dangling from her mouth.

©2003 Holly Troy