The Secret I Kept When I was a Child

On occasion, my parent's friends would interrupt
their adult conversations to notice me. They would ask what I wanted
to be when I grew up.
I never shared my real inside dream with them.
Grownups would never understand how I longed
for a life just like those georgeous ladies
in westerns I saw at the Saturday matinee.
They danced with the cowboys, wearing spangly
dresses and circles of feathery scarves.
Not the drab gowns of the preacher's wife or the prim
lady who measured dried beans in the general store.
Sometimes dangerous badmen or gamblers burst
into the saloon and threatened the pretty ladies,
chasing them upstairs to rooms we never saw.

Audrey Burge