I waited for you

I waited, wearing the pink dress,
which should tell you how young I was,
how soft I was,
when I began.

When you're up to your eyeballs in estrogen,
you'll do things no sane person would ever do--
you wait your turn.
You hold your tongue.
You stand there and cry boohoo,
but your hair stays nice and that's something.

You see, I wanted to look good for you,
should you ever arrive.
I wanted to smell nice, too--
not like the usual napalm and pancakes one finds
in the trailer park
or the bus station.

I waited, patient as a saint.
Thinking me one, little boys beheaded me,
set me on fire,
ran me through,
and denounced me as a sorceress,
but I was just a girl
waiting.

An old woman came and cleaned my dusty eyes with a pungent cleaner
sprayed onto a rag made from the Pharaoh's robes.
After that, I saw how it was--
you were never going to show.
Oh sure, you kept sending pigeons with little messages tied to their legs,
but never anything substantial.
You never picked up the rotary phone in the warden's office
to talk dirty to me.
Not once.

Now, 
I hear from our spies that you've fallen on hard times.
I hear that your lips are turning black and curling off,
for lack of kisses.
Believe me, I know all about heartache and I'll be there
as soon as I see a dinosaur
driving a Deusenberg
and singing "Sonny Boy" in blackface.
Until then,
you can wait for me.
________

art: The Forgotten Expectation by Mark Worrall

for Real Toads mini-challenge.