Looking Up to Sarah

She was born the tallest of all.
Classmates craned their necks to catch
her eye. Too often she bumped her head
in places friends had space to spare.

As a teen. even her teachers seemed small.
The boys heads reached her breasts,
so dancing was a challenge. She mastered
the slouch, to dance cheek to cheek.

In college she found a taller world.
Now men, fixated from across the room
on the blue-eyed dark-haired apparition
who sparkled in a blue hourglass dress.

When she spoke, her voice like a schoolteacher’s
compelled attention. Though beauty and height
turned heads, her poise made them stare.
She no longer wished she was someone else.

That voice, pushing for access to health care,
was heard in the state house and in congress.
Elected to city council, there too, she held sway.
Then like a magic trick gone bad

she was stolen away, in just weeks,
by a cancer that no one could cure.
Few had the chance to say goodbye.
Left behind we’re left to wonder

what, given time, might she have done.
We all looked up to Sarah.