PINK MIST
JoAnne Preiser
It should be the kind of drink
that young girls in A-line skirts
and round collared blouses
sip at Eber’s Drug Store
an effervescent sweet drawn
through long straws while they spin
on soda fountain stools
or the name of the first nail polish
her mother allows her to wear
a shy color, hardly noticeable
over her unlined fingers, unscarred
cuticles, a polish that matches the dress
she will wear to the junior prom.
It could be the gauzy fabric
that hung in her first apartment on Keswick Street
separating her single bed from the crowded living room
a sound so sweet
like that cloying cocktail she drank
in the Kon Tikki Room with a boy home
from Vietnam, a sound that conjures nothing
like a body, nothing near the scent of blood
nothing resembling the vaporization
of flesh and bones.
