We live beneath the shadows of our skirts. Every day, we survive on baby food smoothies and sore-throated kumbayas. Warm temperatures make us cough. We write obscenities on our unicorn wallpaper and we are healthy and beautiful and good.
But Mom doesn't like what we do. She doesn't like when we go to that closed down gas station and break the windows. We pretend the broken glass is diamonds and we play pirates. Our pirates are allergic to diamonds. We stuff the diamonds in our pockets and wonder why our hands are bloody.
Mom scolded us for making coffin shoes out of boxes with dead hamsters and our little neighbor cried. We play games and pretend we are carousel horses, neighing Befit me, befit me. Am I your favorite color? Are my teeth bared enough? Befit me, befit me. We hold prayer circles at night when the stars smell like something burning. With arms outstretched, we can hug an entire continent. We are healthy and beautiful and good.
Arielle Tipa is a writer and editor who lives near a haunted lake in New York. Her work has been featured in (b)OINK, Alien Mouth, and thread, among others. She currently runs Occulum, a journal of the unabashed and unorthodox.