Little Children
Lauren Harrison
The door is bigger than either of them.
Mom and Dad, they’re behind the door.
I know the boy is my brother, before he went to juvvie.
He was taller than me. Still is. The other one,
the girl with the big eyes, that’s me before
I learned to use a dictionary. My brother,
he stares at the door. He will not look at the
girl, but he holds her hand tight.
They can’t see Mom and Dad, but they know them,
just like I can remember them if I try. Dad’s glasses
are plastic. They slip down his nose when he talks.
Mom has too many freckles and pudgy fingers.
I want to take their heads in my hands, tell
them to run. They could go anywhere, but they can’t
listen to me now. I’m talking in my head to something
that happened. The last thing kids need is parents
who sleep in separate beds. (That’s not entirely true.
Dad didn’t sleep in a separate bed. He slept on the couch.)
They are behind the doorknob and the girl
(that was me), she wants to get in. I want
to take them away to somewhere safe --
a closet, a cliff, a school bus, anywhere
not here. I don’t think they’d leave if they could.
She wants to turn the knob, taller than her head of curls.
She wants to see those words
they say fall to the floor. I want to cry, Stupid
girl. You will learn how to talk like them,
you will learn how to scream. You are too
eager to learn everything, even that. But you
are me. I can’t change it, neither can you. This
is who you (I) came from.
I learned from the doorknob. I don’t know
what I learned but that
there are always doorknobs higher
that my head when I sleep.
