When I was a girl,
I wanted magic to be real,
just as anyone would.
I wanted to believe that,
somehow, someway, that the girls
on the playground would not look at me weird.
When I had returned to them carrying cicada shells
and the dead acorns that would fall from that
rotting oak near the swingset.
I wanted to believe that,
there were tiny men inbetween the walls
and my kitchen sink. Making the
AC turn in those summer days, or the
old grandfather clock in the foyer.
Surely there was a kingdom below the cafeteria floor,
Girls with grass stained hems and knights made of tree bark,
and pockets full of beetle wings.
They would speak in Latin names,
and trade fossils instead of lip gloss.
Their crowns made of molted things,
and laughter made of summer.
But there was a kingdom I was privy to,
the one of cafeteria table nine.
No dirt under their nails,
no snail shells in their lunchboxes.
With their scrunchies and their goblets of chrome.
It would have been magical,
if I had been allowed in the hallards of their coven.
Of barbie dolls and spinkies and beyblades.
Of string bells in the winter tide.
Of the secrets folded into
glittery notebooks and
passed between the cafeteria tables.
But I knew the names of the bugs,
before I knew how to braid hair.
The sheen of their black shells,
and the tap of their small worker feet.
They don’t live long, cicadas
I wanted to believe that,
in their brief lifespan that the
fairies would ride their backs,
and kiss their heads,
and welcome them back after their
long journey.
Sometimes I thought the cicadas,
left their shells as proof of transformation.
That something could split itself open raw,
and fall apart,
and still step in the world as something new.
And I believe for awhile,
that if I split myself clean.
Peeled back the bark of my strange, small mind,
left it hanging on the playground fence,
hollow and dry,
the elytra of girlhood.
I might step out brighter,
winged and thin and unblemished and blonde.
A summer slick version of skin.
As proof I had learned their ways.
But the wings I think,
would have been made of paper.
They would’ve wilted in the august rain,
with the ink running down my spine.
They would have held, for awhile.
Long enough to be real.
Long enough for the girls at table nine,
to shift and make a space
that was never quite mine.
I would have learned the language of
Justice shoes and pierced ears.
Braids pulled tight enough,
to quiet the hum under my scalp.
I would have sanded down the bark.
the gears of the windmills behind my walls,
grinding no longer.
There were no dragons underneath the blacktop,
or grass pixies or knights whose armor were made of mulch.
The cicada leaves it shell,
split clean against the tree.