I.
I took
what shimmered—
crystal bracelets
I never wore.
They caught me
on the necklace.
My name in block print
on court letterhead—
I was ten.
That wasn’t the worst thing
I’ve ever done.
But it’s the one
I still replay.
He kept the paperwork
in the safe box—
with the will,
his father’s service pins,
and—on an envelope,
in his handwriting—
Records deleted.
I run my finger
over his words in black ink,
over the courthouse stamp.
Still raised.
Embossed.
Years later,
working at that same Claire’s—
Mom dropping me off
before I could drive—
I thought that
was forgiveness.
What I took
was not forgiveness—
just
the shimmer of wanting.
Proof I could take
what glittered.
II.
Don’t get your ears pierced at Claire’s.
Sixteen-year-old girls
with loaded piercing guns,
pink name tags
that didn’t even say our names.
Purple dots,
blurred by rubbing alcohol.
Line them up just right—
click,
squirt,
twist,
wipe,
twist again.
We practiced on each other.
Now my ears have holes
I haven’t used in years.
They itch sometimes—
ghost memory
of what I did.
Who I was.
I still took
what wasn’t mine—
a moment alone
in the Claire’s stockroom
where I could
breathe.
Cigarette breaks
in the hidden alley
behind the food court
where no shoppers could see.
A daughter going to work.
A father
doing what he could.
III.
There were gods here once.
You could feel them
in the escalator hum,
in the perfume cloud
misting from the Macy’s entrance.
They watched girls
inside Claire’s
pierce ears
and pocket earrings,
stacks of gloss.
They saw fathers
park outside the movie theater
every Friday—
windows down,
waiting.
They never stopped watching.
They just got quieter—
as the mall got bigger,
the crowds smaller.
Now,
when I go in the mornings
before the stores are open
to walk loops with Mom and Debbie—
I swear I smell them
in the air—
too cold,
hints of citrus.
I swear I hear them
breathing
through the PA system—
a divine whisper,
just beneath
the muzak.
I learn the trick
is to keep your breath
in your throat.
Dara Laine (she/her) is a poet based in Baltimore, originally from a hay farm in New Jersey. She returned to poetry after the sudden death of her father. Her work explores grief, memory, and the sacred ordinary through restrained lyricism and symbolic realism. She was a July 2025 30/30 Project poet with Tupelo Press, and her writing is forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, Thimble Literary Magazine, LEON Literary Review, American Poetry Journal, Querencia Press Quarterly Anthology, and Quibble Lit.
Image: “Frickin’ Claire’s II” by Daniel Nester
Pine Hills Review 