Lady Birds’ Evening Meetings
After Sylvia Plath’s bee poems
Why am I here again with all of them flittering about? Just to be alone—
It’s what I tell myself, that I too bear black spots on red skin,
It’s how we scamper about before flowing off with our chiffon wings ready to take flight
At a moment’s notice, I am against the wall once again, wainscotting.
The girl on my soccer team leans over to me as I ready to take the seat next to her.
I don’t want no dirty Navajo sitting next to me, she says with her foreleg atop the cold metal chair.
So I take a seat in the row behind before leaving to find an empty room upstairs.
That day the leaders made us binders, wrapped in cotton filling, fabric, and lace.
I got the last pick; well, it wasn’t a pick at all. It was an ugly bright yellow calico print with thick white cotton lace. No one wanted it.
Why did no one tell me to wear a dress?
It’s my first time to this edifice, and I come without—
The girl down the street, the nice one, offers to buy me a white dress with pink florals from Kmart with her credit card. I accept.
This is an emergency, she declares with her card held high in the air.
I am 13 and she 17. Her parents say she can only use it in the event of—
The fabric hugs my ladybug rolls snugly as I step my way to the temple door.
It’s where we learn to really spread our wings in worship, tune our antennae like aluminum to the heavens.
Earlier I said, I could marry anywhere—that it didn’t matter none to me.
I didn’t know it yet, but I was a bug amid blossoms and their vines, winding through unnoticed and unaware
Until a knock came to my door: a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies sits on the welcome mat,
The girls giggling behind the trees, and there in the starlit night, we became a bloom.
