I knew what to say when the kids in school asked,
If you were stuck on a desert island with just one thing?
I cupped the small treasure in my hands:
a pair of Chanel earrings. Mine.
I’d sit pretty on a piece of driftwood in the open sea:
Composed. Classy. My face, sunlit
by the intersecting diamonds
in the curve of the letter C,
four synchronized swimmers
circling, eternal,
twin sparkling symmetries,
hitched to my preteen earlobes.
I had just finished reading
Coco Chanel’s biography—
unauthorized—but still
sincere. Enlightening.
Chanel—a child who surfed poverty
and emerged as a pearl.
My aunt gave me the biography
right before she gifted the little cadeau.
I wore those earrings with pride,
with jeans, with scuffed flats,
with pilled cashmere,
with hand-me-down everything.
The other girls noticed.
They asked, Which boutique?
My aunt laughed,
Canal Street.
When the other girls with Chanel earrings
talked about the desert island,
I sank.
Kait Burrier writes poetry, drama, journalism, and to-do lists in New York City. Her work appears online and in print, most recently in Everyday Escape Poems, an anthology by SwanDive Publishing Company. Visit www.kaitburrier.com to see what she’s up to next.
Cassoday Harder is a twenty-year-old photographer inspired by youth, femininity, and summer. View more of her work on Flickr or visit her website.