Marshmallowy fingers

Palms echoing lamely like rubber toys against plastic tables

     Swollen and indented

My teacher holds my wrists away

And tells me

     I am not young anymore

“You cannot act two-years-old”

When I am nine

I am out on the playground

My pink spaghetti straps struggles to find any hold on my tiny shoulders 

Slick with sunscreen  

Jello rolling down a bowling lane

I feel sweat between the skin of my arm and my side

And feel my whole body

Like a motley collection of spit and paint covered doll parts

Underneath a pile of tulle play clothes

We go inside

To a new classroom

Half our class is gone

We, now girls, are told 

“You are changing”

A shrimp platter at Christmas

Do I like shrimp?

I swallow it whole

And tuck my complaints into my turtle neck—

Where it hurts my throat

I do not say why

But I tell my father I do not like it 

It is four years later

The same party, the same shrimp platter

My father has forgotten I do not like shrimp

 and he asks again

I respond, how it hurt my throat all those years ago

And he laughs

“Silly girl! You aren’t supposed to eat it whole!”

I learn I like shrimp

I’ve now shown the world I do

But suddenly I feel like a fish

Pushed harshly onto grating sand and pebbles

Gills forced to open to the sky

What face will the surface see?

I tell my mom that at my next eye appointment

I want black frames instead of blue

They can see me now

It makes me wonder

Will I be the same thing all together?

Can I learn to breathe when I think

one day I am meant for water

and the next

I am meant for air?

               I am my sister’s doll

She practices braids in my hair

Tomorrow she is going to college

But she tells me she feels even younger than me

And so

I let her be young.

I keep her that way in my mind

     And there,

               I braid the hair of a younger girl too

                                         And let her whisper about the world to me