A coal miner’s daughter, an American mutt — half West Virginia hills, half northern grit.
Her bloodline is rust, honeybees in margarine bowls and Agent Orange fallout.

Walking Barbie doll, the girls used to yell that to her on the way home from school.
The price of being a bad bitch.

Bleached hair, bright pink blush, lip gloss, hoop earrings.
She could win a fist fight and then paint her nails in the rearview mirror.

Faith Hill and Madonna. Christina Aguilera in a hot minute.
Sade in the bathtub. Phil Collins on a drive through cornfields.

She’s the girl who played basketball barefoot
in a gravel driveway at sixteen and won wet t-shirt contests like it was nothing.

The woman exceeds genre.
Glitter and grief, dirt and a half-off dress at Express.

Once, when I was thirteen, she taught me how to dance in our living room.
Old club moves from the 90s. Hips, hair, don’t care.

She hands me a piece of who she used to be, and lets me hold it for a while.