[ I BEGAN TO SEE US AS CHILDREN ]

I began to see us as children picking common dandelions
after a fight, where I was tearful and he was measured. Or, I saw
me as a child writhing with petulance and shame. His stoic mouth
and freckled cheekbone blinking like a warning. I can’t say who
borrowed from who first. Was it me flipping someone off from the
driver’s seat or him running over the yellow cone and leaving it tucked
between the tire and wheel well. Him with the eye for the credenza, me
worrying over large plants. He started wearing rings and I found a pearl
necklace. We both wanted to be more than the other, this became our
joke. Wondering if hotness could be a form of worthiness and not just
a tacky placeholder. I am okay being flattened, until I’m not, biting his
neck in jest. I became a mimic. Did I forget that he was a child too? I
wanted to meet him beyond what I intuited and subsumed. A child
with a precious need that I could answer.

Ariana van Dyck is a poet from Minnesota, living and writing in New York.