The Collector's Auction

Have you ever smelt a newborn baby’s feet?

Not quite the kind of question to ask a stranger

but Then again neither is “will you kiss me?”

She asked him both over a cup of chai tea

She was untamed and uncertain

She threw confetti in her pancakes

And insisted she would live to see

Oprah marry Nelson Mandela,

can you imagine the children?

No one really knew what to do with her

In fact, no one really knew her

And that alone bothered her just enough

To move from state to state

Looking for the right barber shop

to shave meaning into her flighty collarbones

Her ribcage was a bookshelf of Hershey kisses

She gave them to herself to cover every mistake

She promised her heart she wouldn’t turn the

marks into self-loathing so she gave every rung

a chocolate kiss, each with a little tongue

Grocery bags fascinated her

She was convinced people collected

Their pain in them, like the

Bags full of empty bottles she finds

by her father’s night stand each day

He taught her Empty was a choice,

and so was Smiling, so she smiled even

when she cried

She made sandpaper dolls

And earrings out of doorknobs

Hoping the unlikely things could

Become beautiful, maybe one day

she too could join the collectors auction

It didn’t take long for her to learn the art of making a home

She collected pockets of empty and used the space

So everything in her didn’t quite feel so crowded

Home is where the heart is, they say, to her that meant

home was in her own chest cavity, so she made it livable, beautiful

And one without any of those pesky crumbs of self-doubt