Dimpled Fingers

.

Dimpled fingers
that reeked of crayon and ink,
riffled the fat book whose images depicted
thin children with unfamiliar skin-tones
from different races.

Blatant deprivation
is not pretty. The charity knew this.
Skin was scrubbed and wrapped in clean clothing.
The touched-up, sunrise smiles of these cute kids
seduced even the school-yard bully.

We each paid
our fisted shilling and took an image home.
Girls chose girls, and all knew which boys
were school-yard romance material
by what gender they selected.

It felt virtuous;
saving the children of the world
at the cost of a shilling.

My own photograph girl
boasted exotic black-sheep curls,
milky cocoa skin, ebony eyes that, even
through the monochrome, looked as if the whites
had been soaked in my my mother’s bag blue.
Her smile suggested a regular pastime
of birthday treats, an ignorance
of hunger and misuse.

My mind reeled; beneath
a…