Speaker, Age 12

"Falling From Heaven" painting by JoAnneh Nagler

by Micah Cozzens

 

Sisters and I share a room and they say, Did you bite
my lipstick in half like a carrot?
No, I lie. I didn’t. I didn’t.
They let me sit on the lid-down toilet and watch
them try on smooth dresses
while they push their hair into cylinders,
coils that sproing hot and then, after teasing,
expand into voluminous gleaming,
lacquered to shine in the cheap lighting
of a movie theater, a bad restaurant,
a used car, and they speak a language
I understand in snatches—
Party, date, friends—but I itch
at what I sense they don’t say.
My presence necessitates constraints.
Or maybe it does not need to be said,
what they take for granted—
that it is good to be pretty, to be wanted,
and that all this is innocent, except
there is the sense that one day it will lead to—
What did they call it? Sex?
and that when they appear with eyes lined in glitter and shine,
and their dresses are potent and red, they become
a different sort of person than I am.
I act, but they appear,
and this differentiation has a chemical smell,
perfume and odorized desire,
and I used to escape outside to avoid it,
but now I linger in the bathroom and inhale.
After they leave, I light a match in the wake of sisters’ hairspray,
and I blaze in the bathroom mirror, briefly.

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