School Picture Grade Seven
by Carol A. Stephen

That day I went to school forgetting what day it was,
forgetting to gussy-up for the school pic, that annual event
to freshen up your collection of tiny wallet pics, crammed
in an oversize, 100-photo wallet girls carried back then,
constant companion chronicling the latest dreadful mugshots
and silly poses four for a quarter taken in a photo booth at the fair.
Mine was shiny plastic, blue and white squares, its strap torn,
no longer closing around the wallet’s fat girth.

That day I wore a white sweater, a Black Watch tartan skirt,
my favourite gold pendant with its dark green fake emerald.
Glass, really, but at 11, an emerald to me. I’d have been presentable, but
my goodness! My hair! Not sure now, but I’d probably slept in,
rushed off too quickly to remember to brush those always unruly curls
A…