Tattered Dreams and Sewing Machines

Those little girls with dresses

Crimson, ivory, and cerulean blue

Bows tied neatly at their waists

Only delicately embroidered lace will do

But Mama sewed me jeans with flower patches

Crooked hems through and through

She said it’s my Monday through Thursday pair

For the rest of the week the old ones will do

And the little girls with dresses

Will tug at the fraying ends of my denim

I’ll spit at their swaying skirts

Tongues of serpents, words of venom

Mama cries alone at night

For my crooked hems and my fraying seams

And later she’ll cry some more

For her stolen youth and her American dreams

For the broken promise of wealth

And the land of the free

If you do unto others

Will they do unto thee?

But the humming of her sewing machine

Will gently lull me to sleep

Delicate cotton and taffeta

She’ll sew a dress all mine to keep