Witch

I.

In sixth grade, the other kids call me a witch.

.

A new girl, the prettiest person

I’ve ever seen, laughs,

says I am so creepy,

I stalked her on the hiking trail.

.

I want to say I was only following

her and her loud friends because

we were going to the same place,

they were linked arm-in-arm so I couldn't go past,

but my tongue sits like a raw hunk of useless meat in my mouth.

.

Later, I let

my thinly-veiled tears drop at the

back of the playground, head down in

the trees where no one goes.

(Probably this is lurking,

adding to my list of crimes:

too quiet, too creepy, too

too

too

.

II.

"gross.")

I carve a worm in two by the swings

and the class clown, a dirty boy, a beloved comic

(unless, that is, you are the joke)

looks down at me.

“Ew!” he reiterates-

him, the king of the spitballs lobbed

at the chalkboard; one-third of the

girls in class have fake-married this kid

on the playground (where is the

fairness, the consistency?)

.

I look down again and draw

the keratin sickle of my nail

through the veiny pink again,

leaving three segments now instead

of two, putting another nail in my coffin,

and wait for him, spooked by my silence,

to leave.

.

III.

I blame my haircut at the time,

a short, severe chin-cut-

and the color.

“All witches have black hair”,

stupid-pretty girl says, and I want to tell her

my hair is not black, it is a

dark,

dark brown.

.

But I don’t speak; I never speak.

Instead I harvest up my words like spells

inside of me I don’t yet have the skill to

perform.

.

“Kill it with fire!” dirty boy says,

poking and prodding me with

his grimy hands.

I freeze like a rabbit that’s been

spotted by a predator.

my face grows hot and I wait for it to

be over, to sink back into

obscurity when they find another target,

a better game, how

they always do.

.

IV.

There are years now between me and

that wet-blacktop smelling playground.

.

Sitting in my apartment, I am

burning incense, painting dark

moons under both my eyes.

I look deep into the mirror and

magic myself back to that distant

playground, insert my black velvet-

clad body between dirty boy

and my child self. I take my adult hand

and place it on his chest, shove him to the

ground where he stares

up at me with quivering blanks

for eyes.

No one is laughing now.

.

“This witch,” I say,

“doesn’t burn.”