Carrie George
FALSE MEMORY OF THE WORST BIRTHDAY PRESENT I EVER RECEIVED
I unshed the gift wrapping
and Autumn’s mother smiled at me.
I was nine and the other girls
could wrap their fingers around
their wrists like tiny lace
like delicate stems
spooled comfortably
around a housefly’s thorax.
Who was I when I first noticed
my spilling over? What maze
led me, like a field mouse
up and down each slope
of my body until I memorized
the salt and smooth
and allowed my fingers
to follow?
I was nine when the other girls
began to shrink. Each day, it seemed,
they shrunk and melted
into the floor like hot
licorice, like sugar
tracked over by ants
with their tongues out and sloppy.
They’re shrinking matched
my growing. Conservation
Law in translation: no body created
or destroyed,
only transferred
to the chosen vessel
of girlhood, made suddenly older
by its newly acquired
weight.
I did not ask to contain this.
This bending spine, this heap
-ing ache growing paper-sharp
and cutting as it reaches
back to rise each day stronger
and asks to borrow
a little bit more of me.
It’s not them, the other
girls, the mothers wrapping
wire and fabric
with flashy bows,
the scale, balanced out
by one of me and uncountable
them—
The day I remember,
long, soaked and pungent
with growing.