10. Crabapple Blossoms

SOMEBODY’S little girl—how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.

Somebody’s little girl—she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.

It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse’s Head.

And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went into the house and her mother washed her face and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel voice, “I don’t want to.”

Somebody’s little girl—forty little girls of somebodies splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches, pyramids—forty little show girls, ponies, squabs.

How easy a sob story over who she once was and who she is now—and how the crabapple blossoms fell on her dark hair in June.

Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter—and the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show is over and the street goes dark.

Let the girls wash off the paint and go for their midnight sandwiches—let ’em dream in the morning sun, late in the morning, long after the morning papers and the milk wagons—

Let ’em dream long as they want to … of June somewhere on the Erie line … and crabapple blossoms.

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