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Adolescence by Nina Andrews
Sep. 17th, 2007 01:59 pmAdolescence by Nina Andrews
The winter her body no longer fit, walking felt like swimming in blue jeans
and a flannel shirt. Everything stuck to her skin: gum wrappers, Band–aids,
leaves. How she envied the other girls, especially the kind who turned into
birds. They were the ones boys hand–tamed, training them to eat crumbs from
their open palms or to sing on cue. What she would have done for a red
crest and a sharp beak, for a little square of blue sky to enter her like
wings. But it was her role to sink so the others could rise, hers to sleep
so the others could dance. If only her legs weren’t too sodden to lift, if
only her buttons would unfasten in the water she kept swimming through, and
she could extract from the shadow of her breasts a soul as soft as a silk
brassiere, beautiful and useless, like a castle at the bottom of the sea.
The winter her body no longer fit, walking felt like swimming in blue jeans
and a flannel shirt. Everything stuck to her skin: gum wrappers, Band–aids,
leaves. How she envied the other girls, especially the kind who turned into
birds. They were the ones boys hand–tamed, training them to eat crumbs from
their open palms or to sing on cue. What she would have done for a red
crest and a sharp beak, for a little square of blue sky to enter her like
wings. But it was her role to sink so the others could rise, hers to sleep
so the others could dance. If only her legs weren’t too sodden to lift, if
only her buttons would unfasten in the water she kept swimming through, and
she could extract from the shadow of her breasts a soul as soft as a silk
brassiere, beautiful and useless, like a castle at the bottom of the sea.
