Glamour

Mother had a wall
of photos
of those adored
and famous
and would light
candles to them
and stroke the images
and glare at me,
then a toddler,
beneath them.
You're already so small,
she would say,
but next to this wall
of titans
you seem less
than the dot
at the end of
a sentence.
You seem like the
afterthought
of an atom.
You seem
like the rumor
of a person
long after
he has ceased
being discussed.

Glamour

She'd touch
an image
of a young man
with coltish smile
and a mane of blond
and say, he!
Behold him!
Nothing in his life is small!
He lives
at the top
of a hill
above the
Hollywood sign
and he is,
I am told,
seven feet tall
and counting.
Put him next to you
and would we even see you?

She met
a starlet once
by accident
out shopping
and while everyone else
clamored for autographs
my mother
literally disappeared
whispering:
We are nothing!
Nothing in your presence!
She tried to take me too,
wherever she went,
but I would not go
and have not seen
her since.