We put her under the tap
but the chemicals
she wears to hide the fact
she is actually human
made of sweat, grease, oils, dirt,
will not flush out so easily.
These ones are guaranteed, I think
for fourteen hours to keep
from letting anyone see
that inside this skin
she lives in like an advertisement
for a hundred different products
is only a little girl,
my fourteen year-old daughter
who can't understand how she could do this feat-

The amazing Audrey will now place
antiperspirant directly into her open eye

anymore than she is able to understand, she says
how that morning last winter
it came to pass that I must rescue her
like a person in space tangled
in her life support system,
from her hot comb, by cutting
away her hair, her golden hair
like tiny strands of rope
furiously knotted to the core of absurdity,
so that when each one eventually was scissored in two
she was able to drift back to me
happy again, embarrassed, and free.

We sluice her eye
but the antiperspirant is stronger
than the universal solvent
so we settle finally upon Visine.

We sit together on the steps,
she in her golden
almost-a-woman's body,
I in my old man fat,
and I see the two lines that run across her forehead
like the ones in mine from laughing and crying,
see how much even in our faces we are tied together,
and put the drops into that fragile place
where light comes into her body.