Soft like a Petal,
Gentle as a Feather
Fresh as The Early
Morning Dew
In my Arms,
You Grew each Day
In Your Birth,
I was Born Anew
Winds of Change
Gently blew
Years melted,
Seasons flew
When the burn of the cold
still pricked our cheeks
as we giggled and slurped up
hot soup, strained of course
with spongy white batch
all prepared specially to thaw out
our snowman building bodies
and Christmas lights flickered
across our steamed windows
as the blue-black night pulled itself over
like a vale sprinkled with glitter
Is it wrong that I still long to belong?
To share every care and touch your hair?
To pillow fight, fly a kite, hold me tight,
whisper secrets in the dark, swing in the park?
I sat in the passenger seat,
a habit from when I was little.
There was a smell
I hoped my parents wouldn’t notice.
I was allowed to hang
the heavy speaker on
my half rolled down window,
to control the volume.
We brought our own cans
of pop in a cooler stashed
on the floorboards.
Slunk low during the trailers,
Dad reached through
the bucket seats into
a bowl of popcorn from home
balanced on the parking brake.
How can I whistle? My question came.
My brother teaching me, while my father screaming at me.
You are a girl! Girls don’t whistle!
Then my father whistles.
It is unfair or is it just me?
A girl who couldn’t whistle.
It’s the day for a wild whistle competition.
the fruits of me
nourished by
the fruit of me
before life
beyond my being
would become
their own
And they were
who they had become;
myself…my selves
fractions of me,
addends of we,
divided into wholes