I have blown myself away
with the very breath with which
I blew out the candles on my birthday cakes.

At 1, I was a subway map.
The lines tracing their routes
tangled around each other,
the colors intertwined in my brain
like shoelaces I hadn’t learn to tie.

At 2 I became a fountain pen
with a leaky cartridge.
Spilling words I couldn’t quite pronounce
filling entire pages with ink blots.

At 3, a deck of cards.
A foreign family living in Boston,
a crowded apartment building
and two kids in their thermic pajamas
learning how to play Slap! because
we didn’t have the money to go the movies.

At 4, a pair of cool sunglasses,
unfaced by everything
except perhaps the train that flew past
my cousins window and woke us all up
at 4 am.

At 5, a pencil case.
At 6, a reading lamp.

And at 7, I fell in love and became a compass.
North pointed to my best friend,
a Danish boy with a twin brother who
never looked quite the same to me.
He taught me how to ride a rip stick
and I taught him to subtract fractions.

At 8 and 9, I was a whisper.
A pair of glasses to big for my face
and my nose buried in the Harry Potter series.

At 10, an airplane ticket to Wisconsin.
At 11, an invitation to parties that ended at 11:30
because we were so grown up.
At 12
I became a hospital bed and a kleenex.
12 was the year I saw my mom crying
for the first time
and my brother sleeping in a bloody pillow.

At 13, a treadmill and an emptiness
in the pit of my stomach.
A protruding rib cage
a high lighted spine.

At 14, a history textbook.
The story behind the lines in the palm of my hand,
the heritage of my eyes
brown like coffee beans.

And at 15, bicycle tires
nailed to the wooden floors.
A mom, and a daughter at once.
An empty post it,
a casual text message.