Not Letting Her Go
Passing by the gates of the pool her hand was in mine
squirming like a wet fish.
She bounced as she walked,
her bare feet playing games with the freshly
cut grass that smelled like broken avocados
and dusted peanut shells to me.
She tapped her fingers against my palm like a song
and I held her hand tight so she wouldn’t run.
It was my first time holding a hand so small
a hand so much like my own and
I didn’t want to let her go.
She didn’t know my fear yet.
She didn’t know the fear
burning blue like sulfur flames
pulling air from my lungs,
the fear that suffocates.
I didn’t want to let her go.
It would come later, this knowing,
later when she watched the videos
that her mother had filmed of her in dance class
wearing the pink leotard, the black tutu.
Standing in the line with the other girls,
they would be singing and blowing kisses,
spinning in fluid motions like little pink
wind up dolls in painted music boxes
and she would be trying,
trying to be that little pink wind up doll too.
But she would be interrupted,
interrupted by her own eyes that couldn’t help
opening and closing,
opening and closing.
Interrupted by her hands that were no longer
gracefully rising and falling
but instead had found their way up to her face
on their own,
instead were hitting themselves against her cheeks
and her mouth
and her tongue.
She would taste the salt of her hands
unexpectedly.
Her palms would taste sour like grapes
picked off the vine, still small and green.
Her lips would pucker from the taste
and she would wonder
why she couldn’t keep dancing
why she couldn’t be that wind up doll in the music box.
Then her legs would tighten,
she would fall,
unwillingly,
crumple beneath the weight of her moving body
and the other girls, they would look
and she would feel
ashamed.
Incredible :')
ReplyDeleteI have tics too, and I can totally relate.