My Daughter’s Pajamas

In my dream the neighbor girl and her father

are night prowling through our yard

looking for Barbie's bathrobe.

It is black and white, they say,

maybe fur... as they move through bushes,

the forest crowding the house.

The girl's hand grips the hard breasts and long legs

of the doll clad in thin pajamas. The father

has both hands thrust in his pickets.

They have looked everywhere and I am worried,

can't see them in the dark, can't understand

how they have lost this.

Then my daughter comes outside

still damp from her shower, her hair

a mass of dark gold tangles,

her narrow hairless body, round breast buds exposed

as she dries her back with a towel

and calls to them, don't worry! we'll find it!

and goes on drying herself, unaware

of her nakedness, unashamed of this body

which is all she has ever slept in.

Published in Eating Her Wedding Dress, Ragged Sky Press, 2009