Oh I'll keep pouring it on, a little twitch, I guess I have to try harder handsome, and those baby blues will be open soon and showing off it's sparkle...🩷🌸🫠😅🤣😂

#poetry Odd Woman Out "She's an artist." 
That's what they told me when I saw her at the wake,
slender, striking, wearing a black leather jacket,
a jaunty beret and looking nothing like the familiar dowdy aunts and cousins.
I liked the clothes she wore
and thought she was pretty, but old. 
I was a little girl – maybe five, and you know how that is – anyone past thirtyish seems ancient. I'll bet she was not as old as I am now.
I remember her black hair and aristocratic features, although at five I wouldn't have known that word. 
I knew I'd never seen her before,
not at Christmastime or picnics
or any other family to-do;
I wouldn't forget a face like that.
But here she was, come to say goodbye to the dead. Your father's cousin, they said, the artist – and that was the end of that. 
Now that I’m an artist myself I think of her often,
sorry I never saw her again, sorry I never got to know her,
sorry she was dismissed as a sport, a mutation,
a footnote on the family tree. 
I’m wearing her skin: the old woman at the wake whom the children don't know, wearing a beret of my own and a sheepskin jacket – another minor footnote, a family aberration easily dismissed,
consigned to the sidelines of anonymity, because “She’s an artist.”

© 2014 RC deWinter Published in Moon Sanctuary Press – formidable women sanctuary – skin issue – October 2019

Be Authentic Hold my hand I’ll walk your way. Show your truth in what you say. My voice is strong may yours be too. Walk with me, I’ll walk with you. M. Korach #StarfishClub #mentalhealth