The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple

How many sets of her parents are dead. How many times over is she an orphan. A plane, a crosswalk, a Boer war. A childbirth, of course, her childbirth. When she, Shirley Temple, came out of her mother, plump even at her corners like a bag of goldfish, and one pinhole just one pinhole necessary. Shirley Temple, cry for us, and Shirley Temple cried. The first word of no baby is “Hello,” how strange. The baby believes, “I was here before you, learning to wave just
      like the Atlantic.” Alone in the world just like the Atlantic, and left on a doorstep just like the Atlantic, wrapped in the grayest, roughest blanket. Shirley Temple gurgled and her first words were, “Your father is lost at sea.” “Your mother was thrown by a foam-colored horse.” “Your father’s round face is a round set of ripples.” “Every gull has a chunk
      of your mom in its beak.” Shirley Temple what makes you cry. What do you think of to make you cry. Mommies stand in a circle and whisper to her. “Shirley Temple there will be war. Shirley Temple you’ll get no lunch.” Dry, and dry, and a perfect desert. Then:
      “Shirley Temple your goldfish are dead, they are swimming toward the ocean even now,"
      and her tears they fall in black
and white, and her tears they star in the movie.
She cries so wet her hair uncurls, and then the rag
is in the ringlet and the curl is in the wave, she thinks of dimples tearing out of her cheeks and just running, out of cheeks knees and elbows and running hard back to the little creamy waves where they belong, and the ocean. Her first
      glimpse of the ocean was a fake tear for dad.
A completely filled eye for her unseen dead father,
who when he isn’t dead he is gone across the water.