It wasn't my idea to sort tiny clothes for hours
playing Barbie with my sister. After all, she was older
and only played with Star Wars toys after endless
sequined outfits with small snaps and buttons

bored me out of my male mind. At least I always
played Barbie's boyfriend, a woman's trickery
to get a boy to play with dolls. I'd imagine a wife
who walked like a ballerina en pointe, ready for heels,

or wonder if doll play was a fair trade. I made cities
beneath the porch steps dusting off the window my soul
lifts with the dirt we are made of. Later I came to my
senses and declined all offers for a plastic wife

finding instead a woman whose keen eyes peer
into all the windowpanes I own. Our conversation
is no language spoken, transcending any fantasy
I concocted with pink plastic piled before me,

as if marriage was merely fitting flesh together, and watching it divide.


G. Donald Cribbs