I'm not really sure what my niche here is going to be yet, but I wrote a poem for school and I am super proud of it so here goes nothing.
the first moment
I can remember vividly,
though I’m not really sure if
this is actually a memory or just
details extrapolated from a photo when
I was young and small, curious and fearless,
in a dress I most certainly pitched a fit getting into
wearing my white sandals, Winnie the Pooh on the sole
playing on the grey carpet from that house in New Jersey that
I only know from photos and the time we drove by a lifetime later.
it was soft under my tiny fingers, as I fell off my perch on that mahogany
rocking horse, which I think existed but could be a figment of my imagination
or a rogue piece of a dream, misfiled in my mental collection of maybe memories.
Dad called me Flying-Jenna, lying on his back, lifting me by my belly above his head,
I would laugh and Mom would yell, warning I might spit up on Dad’s crisp work shirt but
Dad didn’t care and neither did I, though I think Mom was right once or always. back then
Dad used to come home early and we’d play hide-and-seek until Mom pulled into the
garage, and we would drop everything to greet her because we hadn't seen her all
day, and it felt like positively forever. but forever felt shorter as the years went
on and we moved to Maryland, where I started school and needed to make
friends, which I didn’t realize would be quite so horrific because Dad
would start coming home late, and kids are cruel and merciless
and being bullied felt a lot like dying. despite the fact that
the tangibility of memory is so very fickle I’ll never
forget the sound of Ali K. breaking my hand
outside the 8th grade lockers, or the relief
I felt when my parents told me I would
never have to go back to that school
and I’d never be tormented by
those kids ever again.
