017/100 aka 157/365

I AM A SHINING STAR
Word Count: 319

I can bend the willow trees and stir the oaks. I can even make it rain. I can lead all the cats in town into the river with a song but of course I wouldn’t do that. It’s only people that I don’t get along with. Them, I would.

Women tell me that my skirt’s too short because I have nice long legs and their’s are lumpy-kneed and veiny. They think because I’m only twenty that I don’t know anything at all. They snicker over husband jokes and even if I get the punchline I don’t let on. I never want to get like them. I hope I never do.

My mother is an Avon lady. She paints her face with quarter-inch grape lipstick samples and tiny packets made for a single application of sparkle purple eye shadow. She says she peddles Avon because it’s a really good product and because she enjoys helping people but it’s really for those samples. She doesn’t have the guts for going after what she really wants. She nibbles and licks at life with a tongue that’s only millimeters long.

My father is a corporate asshole. He goes wherever they send him and comes home stinking of booze and women. Well I don’t really know that but I’m sure he does because he loves to go on these business trips and my mother gets all pissed off about it but makes a roast with mashed potatoes and gravy and four different vegetables and some fancy crème brûlée dessert when he comes home. I even feel bad for her. It’s just so lame.

Neither one of them pay much attention to me even though I am an only child. If my mother would wash her face and look at me without her makeup, if my father would drink lemonade or ginger ale, they’d know that I can turn a rainbow upside-down.