All my life all I’ve wanted was to be myself and someone else. Not theirs but them.

My shame about this greed made me hesitant with other children.

I wanted what they wanted, but apart:

I tried to make it, spooned what I could in shallow mental dishes I stacked all night and poured through

my neediest hole, which opens only for medicine or extreme misunderstanding.

My teeth browned from too much thirst too late.

My eyes bulged from noticing what I wasn’t meant to be.

There was a playground that I went to —and can’t take you.

The first thing I did daily was look for a place to hide, or flee. There were plenty of gates and wide enough trees.

But I stayed off-center, just beyond the sprinkler’s way.

The other children played until they snacked around me. Sometimes they cried. Sometimes they looked consoled by what they couldn’t have.

No not now The boundary of things. The boundary of time. I wish this for you—come soon—to be withheld.

They were so freely asking for more world.