Tiger Lily Can't Imagine Anymore

We're eating peanut butter sandwiches and apples and milk,
Perched on top of the red tunnel in the playground.
Our picnic break.

We're indian princesses,
This is a grave
This is our teepee
(We only lasted two trips
carting sand from the sandbox
back to my backyard,
planning to make a floor)
Then there's the canvas
A pale purple bed sheet.

But the sun in this memory shines dim.

Why did it end?
Not the summer.
Childhood.

Last time I checked, the spice girls were our heros,
We couldn't wait for El Dorado to come out,
And I was hiding the nails for a fort at school in a snowman keychain.

My biggest problems were that Ivan wanted to marry me,
The purple canvas wouldn't get 'weather worn' fast enough,
And that my Squiddys, made of play-doh, were cracking.

Want to know my problems now? Well...
I don't know where to look for colleges or what I want to do,
I can't lose weight,
I stand silent witness to awful things (what can i say?),
I can't get a job to pay for the camp that means my life,
And the wide world in general is in state of mayhem,
which I can't seem to solve.


I can't Imagine anymore.
I look down,
and instead of a fine deerskin dress
or a handmade, tan, element-rotted castaway-get-up,
I see a blue t-shirt,
Lazily draped over mature breasts.


I'm sure we could go out
To the same woods,
and mash and dry the same flowers
and put them into the same holes
in the same brick,
and reconstruct the same teepee
and tote the same sand
(heck, the sheet's probably weather-worn by now.)

But we'd be teenagers, pretending to be kids.
Not kids pretending.
Our secret thoughts would be:
"You don't look like a indian princess to me.
You look like a freak in a blue t-shirt."
Not:
"You get to have the better name.
Your headress is prettier."

So when the grown-ups say "Go out and play"
It's not because think we like it,
It's because they know we do.
And they know we can.

And when big sis is
sitting at the table,
silent tears on her cheeks
It's not because she bit a hole in her tongue,
Or Jean played with Josh and made fun of her.
It's because the world grew her up.

Her life was set on fast
And she didn't know it
until you came along, being the princess.
All she knows to say is
"Go out and play"
Even though she knows
You won't get it.

So go out and play, kids.
Go out and play.


Signing off,
Tiger Lily.