Ronnie Spector Hugged Me
This is what it looked like to an insecure teen.
Three girls with enormous hair and amazingly made-up eyes,
Wearing sequined dresses and spiky heels,
Looking up at me from the sleeve of a 45.
The label said her name was Veronica
But we called her Ronnie.
I wanted to be like her
With hair piled high and that
Little tremble in her voice,
And that aura of a Gang Deb
That I secretly wished I could have.
I didn’t know about her life beyond the vinyl.
The stress, the abuse,
Living both sides of the color line,
The bottle of Manischewitz that
She hid in a toilet tank,
The man she loved keeping her a prisoner
And blurring her reality,
So that for years, the rest of us
Could sing her songs in a karaoke bar
But she could not.
When we finally met
I knew
I just had to tell her.
I had read her book, learned about her struggle.
What could I say to the sequined siren
Who’d danced in her spike heels
But fled her hipster tyrant husband
In her bare feet?
I think I said that I related, that I felt for her.
I wanted her to know
That she was special, that she had survived
So much more than I could ever understand.
And she just hugged me.
I found myself enveloped
In her famous long black hair
In a moment many men would have traded gold for.
What passed between us in each other’s arms
Had a value that could never be sold as a souvenir.
Our lives, so dissimilar, briefly touched.
The night we met we knew we
Needed each other
So.
© 2022 Lynne Bronstein
Bio: Lynne Bronstein is a veteran poet, fiction writer, and journalist. She has published five books,including Nasty Girls from Four Feathers Publishing. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in everything from Playgirl to Chiron Review, from underground newspapers to National Public Radio. She writes the column Show Biz Cats, seen on Facebook.
Love this, Lynne!! Thanks for posting, Marie.
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