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Posts Tagged ‘younger self’

At Five

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 19, 2022| 3 Comments »




Along the lake and down the hill,
the road dead ended into a meadow
with a wooden fence a girl could slip through,

and slip through she did,
that five-year-old version of me,
slipped through the gaps into the tall green grass

and then wandered to the lake
where the weeping willow hung over the shoreline
and she could sit beneath its shade and disappear—

or perhaps more rightly, she could show up.
As herself. Show up not as a girl who lived up the road
but as shade, as shore, as tree,

as field, as green beyond the fence.
Perhaps it only happened once or twice,
that journey past the dead end,

but forty-seven years later, I remember
the dissolution, how beneath that tree
I was no longer who I was, only more so.

How I knew myself as integral to the miracle.
There were whole decades I forgot her,
that infinite version of me.

Tonight I can tell she never left.
How did she ever fit in my limited sense of self?
What does she have to teach me now

of fences, of shadows,
of sitting quietly,
of the art of slipping through?

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Two Chairs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 20, 2019| 2 Comments »

 

I pull out two chairs. One for me.

One for the girl who didn’t want

to become a woman. The girl

who, at night, would use tweezers

to pull out any hairs that tried to grow

where her skin had always been smooth.

The girl who tied a bandana around

the small lumps of her breasts

to keep them from growing.

The girl who wanted to believe

she could stay a girl. I know

she would rather be outside

by the lake, fishing. Or exploring

the woods, looking for treasures.

Or making potions out of bark and grass

and berries in her mom’s old silver pot.

But she sits here with me, awkward,

slouching a little to pretend she isn’t so tall.

She tells me she wants to be a poet. How she

loves to play with words. How she knows

the other kids tease her behind her back.

How she sometimes thinks she might disappear

into light when the sun streaks through the clouds.

I just listen and nod. I know exactly how she feels.

I know she won’t believe me if I tell her

she’ll lose the battle with the hair.

That the bandana trick worked, perhaps too well.

That the joy she finds in writing will never leave her.

That she’ll forget the names of the kids

who teased her, but she’ll always remember

what they said. And despite all these tethers,

she’ll learn to disappear into the light,

to give herself completely to the world.

It will be so beautiful.

But for now, this reluctance,

this longing to remain a girl,

this certainty that there is magic

here in childhood that she never wants to lose.

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