Wild Girls

Sometimes I long to be one of the wild girls,

With their unsettling sunflower faces

Both beautiful and blank.

Sometimes I wish I had hair that had never been cut,

Wild dark curls full of fireflies and jet,

Black and bold as my stare.

I would weigh nothing, just a jewel from a penny candy machine,

Roving with my friends in skinny packs like some sort of small social tigers,

Saying

Yes Mother,

Yes Father,

But at twilight when you call us to come in and brush our teeth,

We sprint for the shadows

And the sanctity of our own skins,

Those places where the wild girls

Hide.

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