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School girls
with giggly kittens jumping
beneath their ironed white blouses and
exaggerated rhythms of rounding buttocks burning
with jealousy and competition, like members
of Hitler’s regime - the junior high culture
of cruelty, rolling their skirts up
at the waists, in the early
sixties, on the way to
school, to flaunt
forbidden knees.
Taunting and hooting
in the gym’s shower, at me,
with my flat chest and stick thin
limbs; and for my lack of
periods which they
discovered - no
boy is EVER
going to
want
YOU
Ha!
~
Proving to me
my worthlessness with
their own shapes and bounces.
~
Yet through my pain, I was the winner
one day. I did fifty jumping jacks ,
outlasting them all, for with so
much jouncing, they wore
out, and breathlessly
collapsed on the
floor long
before.
~
They sat panting,
glaring at me with baleful
glances as I jumped on shyly
by myself and the gym teacher
counted. At last he told me to stop.
Contest over without a doubt.
~
It had been easy. I was
still a wiry runner
and a lithe tree
climber.
~
My bittersweet
triumph at twelve years
old... But my most honeyed
and unexpected life’s treasure
of all time was that the tallest,
handsome blonde boy whom
everyone swooned over,
and swiveled for, fell
in love with
ME!
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