Not Today.

I reach back and rest my wrist on the top of my head, my hair feels cold. I press into the chalk and pull it across the wall, the letters tripping over tiny ridges as I drag.

I spin around and run my thumb over my chalky fingertips, rubbing it into my skin. I’ve grown – about half an inch. I toss the chalk back into the jar in the corner. The clink it makes when it hits the glass sounds louder than it should, like it’s trying to take up more space, like it’s trying to make up for the lack of anything else.

I reach out and let my fingers hover over the wall, pausing above the lines and letters and smudges her hand once made. I can feel her here. I just saw her be buried, and yet, here she is – frozen in this space while the rest of the world whirls around.

Though I know eventually it will all thaw, someday someone will come here and make time move. 

I wet my thumb on my tongue and reach up, dissolving the fresh chalk with my spit. 

We Are at Her Mercy

This is her world that we live in and float in, for she makes the rules just as she makes the waves. Bubbles are drawn to her like moths to a flame. With our limbs stiff, our motions can only be forced by tiny fingers adorned with chipped fingernail polish and boo-boos. We are at her mercy. Those of us with yellow hair are chosen to captain yellow rubber ducks. While those of us with color on our eyelids are enlisted to scuba the porcelain floors, using our painted-on eyeshadow as waterproof lenses and our unnaturally thin legs as propellers. Sometimes her finger-monsoons and full-hand-tsunamis knock us all under water, hopeless flotsam moving with the waves of the young giant. Some days she decides that her ducks need no captains nor underwater navigators, that they can maneuver the seas on their own. On days like this we are all tossed aside, mere jetsam of her spontaneity. Within the hour the sea has been drained, the merciless giant has replaced her dress of bubbles with a nightgown of pink sparkles. She tucks us gently into plastic beds, smooshes her lips against her pointy finger and touches it on each of our foreheads, Goodnight Barbies.