That Dress

One time I made a family portrait,

you know, for art class.

For Mrs. Boscoe, my favorite.

Because we stamped real fish once.

Those rounded plastic scissors

traced my siblings limbs, cutting off

a finger or two, a chunk of hair.

A birthday cake, and a plastic fork.

I arranged my family

as if they were all at a party.

I even pasted a diet coke into a crack

of my mother’s thick paper hand.

The cake, I cut myself,

and placed a triangle of it onto a fork,

into my sister’s fingers. Au natural

The perfect snapshot of a happy family.

One thing I forgot

to glue delicately

near the hip of my mother,

was my own face.

My eyes bulging from

the corners of my smooth face,

my hair an imperfect nest

around my head.

I would have been wearing that dress,

the Mexican one,

that I don’t remember wearing.