After school hours
found day-dreaming girls
upstairs searching
mom’s closet for memories—
the sixties spun into peach,
green,
red threads that
hung loosely on fourth-grade-straight
bodies.
Fluid movements
across hardwood floors
spinning, extending room to room,
lifted them
above the peanut butter fingerprints of Billy
and Tommy’s teasing.
They were ladies,
gentle, pale
who knew love, leading pillow-partners
in sporadic symmetry.
Hidden in their
ballroom no boy could touch them,
not even
bug-eyed Brian
watching through the window,
the glass muting his
laughter.