Poem by Pam Winters

Vania’s Lunchbox
 
Mine was yellow, with flowers.
A longhaired girl in a long dress,
the Sixties captured in tin.
 
And so was hers: Vania,
my new exotic classmate,
pretty as the lunchbox girl.
 
I think she was Russian.
Countries were simpler then,
if you were American.
 
Somewhere east, mysterious,
maybe with witches.
Vania’s voice was a soft smile.
 
I wanted to be her friend.
I liked her, as best
as a six-year-old knew how.
 
It was inevitable:
one day, two girls, two boxes,
and hers came home with me.
 
Where was the thermos?
Instead of the bologna sandwich
I didn’t eat,
 
because Shari told me
bologna comes from a tongue,
there was--
 
I don’t know.
A loose stew? A mess
in the box, oozing from the walls.
 
And I don’t remember
whether Mom washed it out--
I was a spoiled brat, Shari said--
 
but I remember Vania’s eyes,
how their light closed
as she took her secret back.

​Pamela Murray Winters (Prince George’s County, MD) is the author of the poetry collection The Unbeckonable Bird (FutureCycle Press, 2018). She lives in Maryland with her husband and various animals. She is at work on a second full-length manuscript.

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