Valerie Bertinelli Deserves My Forgiveness

but I'm not ready to let her back in just yet.

Do you remember her hair? I needed those
chocolate waves, that gravity-defying
underflip, those bangs, bangs were so
in. I was too young to be her, I wanted her

to babysit me. My own babysitters drove me
under veil of night to strip mall parking lots
to make out with sinewy, Winston-smoking
boyfriends while I played dead in the backseat.

Valerie fluoresced. I had her under surveillance
over defrosted stuffed shells on TV tables,
my girl hair wet from the bath. For how
long did she invent herself, scratch hearts
into three-ring binders, at how many

sold-out shows did she swing her hips in
the front row, fling her sex appeal
like a million pairs of panties, before he
noticed her? By the time Valerie Bertinelli wed

Eddie Van Halen, I was pretty much on to her,
proxy for every perfect prom princess, my crush
long since gone ordinary. The television instructed me
to become important before bedtime. I believed

if I made it to age ten, I would turn into a boy. The calendar
shambled on, defying the fact of my unwelcome breasts.
Where on earth was Valerie Bertinelli?
She might like to know: I woke up one day an ordinary girl.