When I started working
with kids, I worried constantly
that their quickness to ask
after my blue hair would lead
them to wonder aloud about
the scars across my arms.
No one wants to see that,
rebuked a four-year-old.
He meant my breasts,
uncommonly exposed,
in summer. Spaghetti-strap
tank-top. The bus stop
to his door enough
to gather sweat.
Am I an animal? –
to be this bodily,
flushed and sweaty,
my body hanging past
where I expect it to extend?
Am I an animal?
I’ve clawed my skin.
(Why?) - -
If he were fourteen,
forty, if he were me, even,
I still could not explain.
