There is a (Petunia Faced) Girl Inside

Am I a part of you? Zoey asked me the other day as we were driving home, and I very nearly swerved off the road. I have no idea where she got that from, or why she asked the question. But I said yes and held my breath as I ran the tail end of a yellow light slow. She is part of me, and I her, both of us girls wearing clackety clack shoes on an uneven driveway giggling cheeks and teeth and eyes. And I know that one day years from now I will wonder how I have a teenager when I am still one myself, a twenty year old, a forty year old, forever a girl raising a girl with breasts and just one coarse gray hair. That one day I will be very lucky to notice, irritated, how she sees me step through doorways and over curbs, how she watches me out of the corner of her eye as if I cannot see for myself that the floor slopes down. The whole of us the sum of eachother's parts, uncertain as to exact proportion and time and again.

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

--Lucille Clifton

Happy Friday to all, and to all a good weekend.

xo,

Susannah