Sparkly Little Paula

 

Sparkly little Paula, 

turquoise eyes and baby hair.

And ever since I saw her,

she shone bright but she was so much smaller 

than us girls who towered over

as we listened to her naughty stories.

Her vampire teeth, translucent skin.

She was from a fairyland of chaos.

 

Stepmothers and step brothers.

A noisy home to drown away her worries

and thoughts always of her distant mother.

Don’t Worry Be Happy, was her song,

she sang it and smelled of Beautiful,

‘It’s Estee Lauder,’ was her cry.

She wished to be a butterfly,

dressed in her very own fashion designs. 

 

The apple of her father’s eye.

Her gave her an enormous car, 

an uglier vehicle there never was,

with so many cushions to lift her high

but driving didn’t suit her

and anyway Paula was born to fly,

just like her mother who left her for America. 

‘I’ll follow her’, she said, ‘one day, I’ll get away.’

 

I left too although I didn’t get far, 

and who should I bump into on the dullest day

but sparkly little Paula who’d moved 

to live her dreams of fashion.

How fast we drifted in those days.

The years blinked away to memories

but Paula’s wings were restless. 

She still yearned to follow her mother.

 

And so she lived her dream and flew  

to the America she’d spoken of so much 

when, as a girl, something was always missing.

And there she got married, I was surprised.

Perhaps it was a passport or maybe love.

Who knows but they did well. 

Paula’s father left her all the sparkles 

of his wealth and set her up for life

and likely smiled as he imagined his little apple

living her dreams where she’d always longed to be.

 

And with this cushion of money 

she could indulge herself but now

from what I’ve heard, her husband

didn’t like that she was rich and had it all.

His tiny British wife who sparkled so bright

that everybody who met her loved her.

 

They argued and from what I read,

He drove her to a quiet place.

And in the land of guns of course he had one too.

He took it out and in the seamlessness of time,

he ended my smallest friend from school.

He finished little Paula.

 

No more to sparkle. 

Her turquoise eyes went out.

He turned the gun upon himself.

A murder suicide it said 

in the smallest column of the paper.

‘They really loved each other,’ was all

her husband’s family said.