I think I’m three:

My siblings are twins
and refuse to speak my language.

*

I think I’m five:
I don’t like boys who break pencils
I don’t like boys who stain tables
I don’t like boys who lie
I don’t like boys who punch doors.

Girls wearing skirts are too easy
always targets for the silliest jokes.
I don’t like this game about panties
I won’t play doctors at school.

I am five and I am serious.
Why should girls become toys?
I won’t mingle I won’t jiggle.
Not funny this boys will be boys.

*

I think I’m seven:
The bird is dead
and I feel like touching it.

*

I think I’m nine:
Hospitals smell wrong
I get unnecessary toys
to pretend I can have fun
while attached to this room.

Anaesthesia dreams are odd.
I dream grass, sand and snow.
I wake up and see what I dreaded :
i) the hanging plastic bag dripping

ii) the plastic tube in my arm
iii) the moving bars on wheels
to clink-clank my way
through corridors strange and shiny.

*

I think I’m eleven:
When it comes to classmates, I prefer sermons on
Jehovah, Paradise & Armageddon to sex, drugs & Rick Astley.

*

I think I’m thirteen:
I detest the girls
who want to find me a boyfriend.

*

I think I’m fifteen:
Raisins in the birthday cake?
Such obvious mistake.
I want us all to play grown ups
but teens are still kids. They smoke,
but will only have chocolate.

I sulk by the pool
at this unhappy party
surrounded by friends I don’t like
thinking when it will be right

to let them go get drunk
on cheap wine and Coca-Cola
while I finish my raisins
and laugh, delighted, to be sola.

*

I think I’m seventeen:
I wear braces and spend
many an hour entrapping there my tongue.

*

I know I’m nineteen
And I leave, for good, home.
So mistakes will finally be mine, and mine alone.

*

 

Illustration: Anonymous, grabbed from Pinterest