I'm five years old
and Mom is talking to me because
of the dress-up dress I'm wearing.
Yanked from a box in our basement,
the long, one-shouldered drape
smothers me in damask.
A black rosette
bursts out in moiré on the single shoulder
tickles my neck.

Mom tells me
she wanted
to commit suicide
while we sit knee-to-knee
on our split level's stairs.
The top of her head
kisses the cheap iron banister,
that has just wounded my
baby brother's chin after a fall.

"I bought that dress when I decided
I couldn't go through with it."
She reaches out to pinch the stiff fabric,
green eyes caught in some place
called the Sixties and France.
"I was so skinny back then, you know,
before you kids."

My brother cries upstairs,
so she leaves me wallowing
in her suicide dress.
I applaud
her fear of suffocation, blood and the unknown.
I've just learned from Bible school
I will die and my nightmares
of being caught without escape in
a basement fire only reinforces this.
I wish I could tell her about my dream,
but I'm afraid she'll tell me hers.