while wondering if I’d ever grow up, I realize that I have. The other night, these memories came back with a startling force and left me giggling like the eight year old who dared to LIVE!
once upon a dream i recognized telephone numbers by their tones and assigned numbers to letters like codes and anything said to me I could say it backwards.
I remember discovering palindromes and that noon’s swing was a pendulum.
I made caricatures that made the boys laugh hard and some so much that you could hear them fart.
I’d red light and green light like a thief in the night and break like a skid mark when leaders change their minds.
I could fall face flat in the midst of a crowd and pick myself up and drown out the sounds to continue strutting my stuff.
with my neon slap bracelet and British Knight kicks
and those bright curly laces and Cross Colors lids.
I made haters feel like mounds under my feet, as I skipped and I lept and I bound to my own beat, I sang through the halls like a frauline’s Alps.
My heels were alive with the sounds of heart
and my heart wall filled with double dutch ropes and a painter guy called da Vinci I’d done a report on.
I flit and flee-d ’til I could not bare to stand with the world spinning round me with all of its plans
the domed jungle gym held that world at bay ’til whistles blew catching the last kickball of the game.
The coolness of staying up somewhat late and watching the Cosbys with the whole fam at eight.
playing Luigi with the big kids cuz you could never be Mario and moving the controls like a frog with a fit like yO!.
knowing all of the songs where we crossed and we clapped with senorita turns and that jig-ga-lo dance.
reading my rainbows were my biggest tasks and mami wanting me to roll downhill a little less ragged.
as well as brushing my teeth and going to bed so I get up the next morning and do it again.
now that i’ve grown up outside my champion forts
life snuck up behind me and sent me to traffic court.
I’ve been fined for nostalgia in a meeting mid morning
and its time to walk up now cuz i think . . . i am snoring.
