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.