Frock

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Highchair Fashionista

Her mania for haute couture
came a little premature
when she first crawled across the floor,
wanting to see Grandma’s Dior.
When she took her first steps and fell,
it was reaching for Auntie’s Chanel.
The words she learned at Mama’s knee
were Calvin Klein and Givenchy.

Her alphabet from A to V
(from Armani up to Versace)
she learned in closets of her kin
dreaming of how she’d look in
Louis Vitton, Laurent, Bill Blass.
She’d be the best-dressed in her class
of other girls in cut-off jeans
and dresses made by mere machines.

Thus are fashionistas made.
As other children sell lemonade
or waste their days in hide-and-seek,
they are fingering La Fabrique
and looking at the fold and drape
of a model’s evening cape.
To each their own, we’re given to say,
and yet I’m prone to saying “Nay,
childhood might be better spent
in pastimes of another bent.”

I’d hope that kids from zero to twelve
might be more encouraged to delve
into comics or games or nature
with no stylish nomenclature.
Let kids be freakish, free and nerdy.
Let their clothes get torn and dirty.
Time enough for fashion cults
later, when they’re grown adults.

The prompt today was premature.