Rumors on the floor say she’s here
because of her connections. But the truth
is much simpler: the money may be good,
the work may be easy, but no one wants
second shift in August, so she got the job.
In charge of two furnaces, she loads pieces
off long carts, feeling summer freckles slide
from her face, and her skin grow tight
around her cheeks, her chin, even her ribs.
In the heat of hot grills, she discovers
it is easy to daydream, to think the smile
on the maintenance man is real, but
the knotted hands of all the press operators
will disappear when they push through
their coat sleeves at quitting time.
When Lewis Hine appears, box camera in hand,
she doesn’t blink. Never remembering
those pictures buried in her history textbooks,
photos of little girls stitching artificial flowers
in tenement houses, or young women
mending cotton threads in mills thick with fine dust
and lint, she poses, thinking of his words —
I only take pictures of beautiful children.
It’s still summer. She’s 18, but looks 14.
She only wants to be beautiful.