on a hospital parking lot

something wet, little flecks between rain and snow, land in straws of lace against the green pipe-cleaner convolutions of the hospital-parking-lot tree. "I don't like that shirt," says mother suddenly, "it looks like an undergarment." I shake my head sharply: she does not understand that today i am Sofia Coppola; tomorrow i may be Regina Spektor or Alexis Bledel. i think but do not say: no, mother: i must slide through the shells of the people i like in a precocious attempt to define myself.