KEIRA LYNN DODD

Adolescence 

 

My shell is beautiful--

a thin layer of pure white,

a blank surface on which to paint

your own imaginings.

Whatever you want me to be,

I am. I practice the opposite of birth,

tucking inward, curling myself

away from the walls, so not even

a silhouette of my true self

will give me away.

 

I am safe, though fragile.

I know that when I break

I will spill out,

a mess you won't be able

to clean up,

so I wait inside.

 

I dream of feathers--

of breathless flight--

of nakedly marking the blue sky

with the shape of my body.

 

Instead I play at death,

pulling the thick blanket

over my head,

forcing the pillow

against my own face.

You knock against my door,

begging me to come out,

but it's warm here.

I can abort myself again

and again, suspended

in perpetual incubation.

Pieces of me float around

so that I can't even tell

what I might have been

had I been born.

 

If I wait here long enough,

I know time will stop.

I won't have to expose my pink skin

to your ready talons,

the ones that snake across my shell,

starting cracks that spread

like fault lines. I won't have to slip

into your wings,

curving myself to fit your body,

becoming a smaller, weaker

version of you.