TO THE GIRL I WAS
PUBLISHED POETRY INCLUDED IN MY FORTHCOMING COLLECTION: LETTERS TO NOWHERE
i am six. sick. scarred cornea
with patches cradling both eyes.
they illuminate black holographic
shapes shifting behind fabric.
i am listening to books on vinyl
and joni mitchell. it is 1983.
on the outside, i wear fiery pink neon
and layered plastic necklace chains,
safety pins and seed beads on dirty
white reeboks. but i don’t know
what i look like inside yet. i am
a car-rider today, picked up
in her peach volkswagen rabbit.
chocolate vinyl interior, smallish slits
in upholstery covered in years-old sand.
it is beach, boston, my mother,
and the first time i am called poor.
but i can’t be. i have salt-sprinkled hair
and a mother who puts applesauce
on the side of every meal and towels
down in the backseat, so the sun
doesn’t bite our legs. (i move with tides
and am shape-shifting again. my simple
is not tragic.) but i am not comfortable
being touched in the back of the parking lot,
where i can’t see the moon and the woods
eat away at the asphalt. i do not say a word
and find out later how deeply this affects me.
i am the intersection of ashes, moss, and
the odd geometric stone sculptures that spend their time
where i wait for the school bus. years later,
i tell another man i can’t stay long.
my minutes are like this—sacred and my own.
i have words spilling over the sides
and thoughts to hear, but i cannot listen.
not until she is oldish, and the space between
her and the sheets is no longer definable.
i bring her applesauce and towels.
i cannot not stay in one life or find myself
in the places i left a trail back to.
there are no bread crumbs. no woman
in the forest. my mouth is empty.
i am connected—threads, trial and error.
mostly trials, but so much error. i find out
in another life that not everyone leaves,
but i do. i can bloom in the desert without water,
where there are no voices,
no parking lots. only sand.
Originally published in Emotional Alchemy Mag, as "“Who I Am,” October 2019
