Royalty

'Remember when I was Queen?'
her brown button eyes
sparkling in her aging kewpie doll face.

'I was in that white convertible,
you know the one - Dr King had it -
it was white.'

' I beat out Kate O'Malley for Queen,'
 she recalled,
'Oh yes.' the past shining through
the reality of what was to come

to both of them, Kate O'Malley and my
sister,
brought now to living with cats and other
Former Queens,
stealing extra desserts at supper,
secreting sweets and memories
pocketed to later savor.

The bloom was off the rose, as they say,
by eighteen;
girls of easy smiles
and easy ways
in an unforgiving town.

'Gather ye rosebuds--'
I'm glad they had their day,
a youth misspent to look back upon
with glittering round brown eyes,
a wistful smile,
a pocketful of tears.