Missing Miss Mavis
Life without her
would never be the same
She was the loudest, proudest
most endearingly brash
sugar-sweet and pickle-sour
five-foot-two, force to be reckoned with
that anyone in Yell county had ever met
I confess
I was somewhat obsessed
with Miss Mavis' hair as a child
perhaps it was the fact
that she was the only white woman
I'd ever seen sporting an
honest-to-Oh-My-Goodness Afro
And her hair hadn't always
looked like that
I'd seen photographic proof
pictures from the 60's that showed
her having a mile-high beehive
lacquered with layers of AquaNet
utterly unmovable
much like Miss Mavis herself
Never married, Miss Mavis' house
was unapologetically pink
in varying shades
Pink carpet, wall-to-wall
pink wallpaper, curtains, bedspread
even the ceiling above your head
pink on the tiles of the bath
pink toilet?! pink sink
pink details down to the
homemade tissue-box cozies
Looking for all the world
like the inside of an old lady 'collector's edition'
Barbie house, with rainbow-colored clashes
of crocheted kitsch thrown about everywhere
piles of clothes draped over chairs
comfy but cluttered, it had a crazy air
of outrageous audaciousness
She was more comfortable
being herself
than anyone I'd ever known
so natural
as if to say
who else would I be?
It never occurred to her
to even try
to become someone else's ideal
She was that real
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