Poem: "Making Believe"
This poem came from the September 18, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from kelkyag. It also fills the "silk/satin" square on my card for the Cottoncandy_bingo fest. It has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. This poem belongs to the series Monster House, and you can read more about that on the Serial Poetry page.
Making Believe
As I left the home office, I paused
at the door of the children's bedroom.
My wife had just brought home
an armload of goodies from a rummage sale
and the children were playing dress-up.
Our son wore a black suit with a red silk tie
and a hat that fell down over his nose.
"Look at me, I'm a gangster!" he said.
"I want to be an opera singer," our daughter said.
She tried on a lush dress of blue velvet
and another of burgundy with a narrower skirt
before settling on one of mauve satin
with elbow-length gloves of dove-grey silk.
She clonked across the floor in high heels
to grab a fur stole with glass eyes in its stiff little head.
Her brother pawed through the pile on the bed
and grumbled, "Why do girls get all the good stuff?
She has way more for her than I do!"
He stomped away.
My wife smiled and said, "Well, women tend to shop more.
That means they wind up with more junk in their closets,
and thus more of that can be found in rummage sales."
The little old lady ghost shooed him back to the bed
and pointed out this and that among the items of clothing.
He pulled off the gangster suit and changed.
"Now I'm a soldier," he declared.
There was a real hat, but rest of the outfit
was only vaguely similar.
Then the little old lady ghost waved her hand
over the floor-length mirror on the wall,
and just like that, there they were reflected in the glass --
the soldier and the opera singer, all grown up,
tall and handsome and beautiful.
Then our daughter kissed her brother on the cheek,
and he ran squealing out of the room
trying to wipe his sister's lip gloss off his face.