A girl stands
No more than three feet and
Seven years old
Bent over a cardboard box
With the label Kittens
Scrawled in guardian ink
Her mother stands over her
Arms crossed
Disapproving, unloving
To the girl
That moment is stretched
Between zero and one
An infinity
The girl hopes to find a cat that flies
So she can be a girl
Who travels the world alone
But never lonely
Experiencing a phenomenon
Full of words and
Too full for words
Belonging everywhere and
Loved by all who see her
The girl hopes to loose herself
Be pulled her out of her skin
Tainted with the emptiness of the
Unrequited love
Felt by a high school boy who asked an angel to dance
Only to be laughed at
And a teenage girl who begs her father to
Accept that the boy she has been dating
Is in fact named Jasmine
And is not a boy at all
Without this skin
She will fly
With the winged feline
Instead of a defenseless kitten
She is a lioness
Golden ruler of the wild
She roars
“I want that one”
There is but one to choose from
It is small
Still wingless
As she used to be
The mother who never loves the girl
Shakes her head
A head that has been plastered to look too young
And rattles her pearls
Snap goes her fingers
A worker is summoned
Ordered to wrap up the kitten
“No, I don’t want that one, I want that one”
The lioness points to empty air
The woman kneads her forehead that should have wrinkles
Scolds the girl
Had her eyes returned to the box that should be empty
She would have seen two kittens
One with pearls, one with wings