An Aside
Girls peeling skin, peeling splinters back, making origami
of each other’s faces, girls rug-burned and face-planted,
girls with blood under their nails, girls biting boys
on the playground, whitening their knuckles, girls hiding
by fences, in the bleachers, under sheets, girls
eraser-burning their wrists. It was always the girls,
snapped-elastic and shoulder welts, graphite under skin,
split-chin and stitched three times, girls poisoning pet snails
with nail polish, girls dragging girls across haylofts
& digging their feet in, probing dead mice
behind the farmhouse, girls whitewashed & clapboarded,
bobby-pin stabbed & decidedly. Little girls
with red tongues, teeth wired, sweaty & shoving quieter girls
under bus seats, girls faking their own adoptions,
tearing leaves, deveining everything in the schoolyard,
girls gouging each other with tweezers, with heels,
girls I knew all of you and now—
