I started keeping track of time
When I was in fourth grade
And I hurried home
With the bright
Idea to stuff
Tissues
Into my
Shirt.
So,
The bus rolled up to the four way intersection
And I hurried home along Point Caution Drive,
And I opened the secret
Door in our driftwood fence and nervously sprinted
Down the pathway to my front door through the
Blips of sunlight serenely placed in the spring weather.
There was a vividness to spring at that age and it
Might only be because this was when I
Started keeping track of the seasons.
I opened the front door and my mom cooed to me that she was
Busy napping so I climbed up the staircase to our rooms and
Nervously, courageously pushed open my sister’s door
Knowing she wouldn’t be home for a bit
And I collected a wad of tissues from
Her dresser and stuffed them into
My shirt and then I walked over
To the mirror and with this
Strange foresight that
It mattered to
Genuinely
Want
To
Be a girl I
Said to myself…
“I like this!”
And I smiled,
It was not solemn at all.
And that’s when I started keeping track of time,
Because until the fourth grade,
Until that day my life had
More or less been a blur
Without much suffering
But then my life changed a bit,
Like the lives of many other human beings…
My life became, “Now, it has been x weeks since
I did that really bad thing.”