Sometimes I’m running

So fast

All I hear is my own breath

Whooshing past,

Running blindly and high

Running to birds and sun and sky.

Once,

a cloudless summer day

I was running after Joe at age five.

No one knows where he goes—

My ponytails bobbing

Tongues of my ragged size-9 shoes hanging

Saying, Joe lemme come lemme come!

My house is a hornet’s hive!

My head throbbing,

My heart banging.

Soon I was running

Back to Mom tattling Joe DID it!

Let’s say I’m running,

Clinging and begging,

Halloween-picking or Easter-egging,

Or I’m at summer AWANA club.

Casey and Brittany, middle-schoolers

Pick me up and rock me cause I’m adorable,

Face-painted, T-shirted, brown-haired me

Tiny as a carseat’s armrest.

They’re singing

Jesus says to live

Give and give and give

Store your treasure

In Heaven where it lasts forever.

Let’s say I’m running

to Bluff Street Playground

Where big-girl swings are sunning

Kiddies hot-faced and funning

Lovers kissing

Basketballs missing

Thuggies glaring,

Stoners blankly staring—

David’s running off like a maniac—

Watch where he goes!

Forests of plastic steps and slides

I can run, I kiss the ground, I can dance,

I can glide.

I’m skinny-scared, tiny as a midge,

Pushed and carried by Mommy

Over the sand,

The Trolls’ and Billy Goat’s Bridge

Tomorrow

 My small feet

Will be gunning

Let’s say I’m running

And yes, jumping

Jumping my new bike over clumsy brick-piles

Wishing I could go for miles

While Joe pops a wheelie,

Making the sidewalk burn.

My training wheels and big-girl wheels,

turn and turn and turn.

Let’s say I’m running

And hopping

And yes, sometimes stopping

To run in the hose-water

Hang from a tree-branch

Or just admire the view—

For every day

Is something new.

We spent long ago days

at homeschool mom playgrounds,

hot hot sand and glorious

SPRINKLERS,

So fine I memorized their shapes

And colors,

Once I was running through the water

In my regular clothes,

Gloriously soaked.

Big kids snapped their fingers

Way up on the monkey bars

And I was soooo mad,

Cause I couldn’t make my tiny fingers crack

One bit.

We spent my Seventh

Happy Birthday

On Bluff Street,

Ortizes eating cake,

Sun shining bright.

I got a doll named Sandy,

A sweet orange purse, candy-filled.

Mrs. Ortiz’s lover, baseball bat in hand,

Whack-whack-whacked the piñata—

Crack! Crash!

Running, scrambling,

I picked up those gooey, plasticky,

Disgusting strawberry candies.

Happy birthday,

Happy birthday,

In a sad

Cloudy

Bad

World.

An attempted-murderer

A violent psychopath

Broke the piñata at my seventh

Happy Birthday—

Oh, Lord,

We were all loco,

We were all a fragile pinata

Waiting to break.