Compliment

She frowns with blue-mahogany buttered brown,

eyes a’blaze like proverbial flames and

sunsets of cerulean six.

She laughs with an equally caustic

frown - loud and presuming omnipotence.

She smiles with the gleam of gold

on her other-bones, her pseudo-innocence; but

only if there was a diamond -

                a tiara, a downfall,

                a baby’s love, a monarch,

                a sterling hope, a cabbage white,

                a care

in the world -

perhaps she’d be pretty, perhaps

she’d be a butterfly flitting away (sans bitter)

driven by the wind.  I called her friend.

I called her “friend” and she smiled BLING,

and she turned her back

and I called out her name

and she smelled of charcoal; yet

I see potential

in the gleam of her smile, where I wish

I saw a diamond or cubic zirconia

(bisque or blanched).

Copyright © 2005 Jacquii Cooke