BY MANISHA SHARMA

Girls pulled out like weeds left to wilt, you’ve seen
you were a girl once, so say something before you die
leave a text, hashtag #museumofgirls
bequeath your legacy, the world, we will thank you
give something that says it’s just you
maybe that diamond earring, your eighteenth birthday gift
or those black and white photos your father exposed in 1976
with the enlarger he made

dark room
glass plates
metal trays
special photo paper
dipped in water
red and black
cardboard boxes
silver-foiled contents

it’s You in there, clasping the white cricket bat
jasmine stringing your hair
crooked teeth biting birthday cake
You,
just giggling
silly

look, donate anything, I promise
you’ll be famous
audacious I’m being but it is my duty
as the fear-imagine museum director

I assure you of one last thing.
I will see to it that the museum is up and running before it’s time
for you to say good morrow on the other side

good morrow, phrase borrowed from the English metaphysical and romantic poet, John Donne’s poem, “The Good-Morrow,” published in a 1633 collection called Songs and Sonnets

Manisha Sharma is a Causeway Lit Poetry Award winner, Jack Grapes Poetry Award, American Short(er) Fiction Contest semifinalist. She has poetry forthcoming in Choice Words…. , and recently had poems in the Arkansan Review. A Vermont Studio Center scholarship recipient, AWP mentee, she earned an MFA from Virginia Tech, teaches English, Yoga at New River Community College.