-

she started a girl with pink dresses,
dirty white sandals and rustled hair she’d pull down
before she even left the door.

she hates the lace, the way it pulls on her shoulders
and droops a tulip over her hips and down her legs.

but she braves through it, because mommy says so.
she’s mommy’s girl, a girl who did what she said instead
or whatever she wanted to. she’s mommy’s girl,
a girl who wore dresses and attended parties with
the same dolly she cried for when she got it for her birthday.

-

it’s medieval day- the biggest day of preschool,
like a prom for little whores and cute business men.

paige, do you want to be a knight or a princess? she asks.

i want to be a knight.

no, you don’t.

i want to be a knight.

don’t be silly.

but i want to be a knight.

but you’re a pretty princess, she says.

the girls call her stupid.

she cries.

-

she sits on the cardboard castle steps, a cone hat on her head.
a sparkling strand runs down her shoulders, over her hair. she pulls.
the grown ups don’t understand.

a boy stares.

i can give you my sword, he says.

what?

i can give you my sword, he says.

he wraps her fingers around it.

she stabs him, and he laughs.

-

third grade snack time was like nap time,
except they all liked doing it. she liked to color.

she draws hearts and another little girl.

what are you drawing? she asks.

a pretty girl.

ew, she laughs. that’s gross.

-

middle school is the kind of place where adults
just put all of the most fucked up kids, with braces,
bad skin, smells and awkward kisses the eighth graders did
behind the stairs and lockers when the teachers weren’t looking.

she sits on the old, wooden bench that breaks her skin
when she moves. she lets the pen write with her hand.

there are things in her head. there are things she knows isn’t exactly right.

there is blonde. there are curves. there are brown eyes and summer legs.

and she speaks.

-

she reads under the stairs. she can’t stay inside, she can’t stay outside.
she is between, stuck, only seen through the slight cracks, below.

dyke, she hears. dyke. fag. queer.

she’s so close to the book, she could whisper to the pages.
she kisses them, traces the text with her fingertips.
atticus finch, holden caulfield. they understand.

-

i’m not what you think i am, she says. her voice is of high school blues.

i don’t know.

but i am.

-

hey.

hey.

how are you?

i’m okay.

i heard you wrote too.

-

i defy you, stars.

-

-

you’re confused, she says.

but i’m not.

you’re confused.

you’re mommy’s girl, and i love you.

you’re confused.

you’re confused.

-

-

-

i’m confused.

-

there was a time when she liked things because she liked them.
that things were pretty, or ugly, or smart, or stupid. clean. dirty.

now things are just jumbled, sick, sick things mixed with what is healthy.

sick being a complexity of things: skinny magazines, tv blurs, whispers in the hallway.

healthy is hard to come by.

-

the words are only poison on her lips. thick, dead, skinny words.

i am juliet, she says. i am night and which way fate may take me. there are fingered stars and skied vertebrae. and only in the arms of covers pillow cases she sleeps, thoughts off her cheeks into the fabric below her chin-

but i am jane eyre, she says. i am no bird and no cage ensnares me. she is a feathered creature with backbones embedded in rib cage. the bird beats in her heart, a sick thing that gives her pains-

but i am holden caulfield, she says. rye- golden folds of eyes. she can’t breathe; her heart pounds in her chest, the fist of a child at her throat, and she chokes on their words when she speaks. she hurts, she hurts more. she cries. but one stares.

should a body kiss a body
need a body cry?

x