Fierce Girl Playing Hopscotch

You sway like a crane to the tunes of tossed stones. I am what you made to live in from what you had: hair matted as kelp, bad schools. Oh, you will never know me. I wave and you go on playing in the clouds boys clap from erasers. I am the pebble you tossed on the chalked space and war- danced toward, one-leg two-leg, arms treading air. In this, your future, waves rechristen the sea after its tiny jeweled lives that hiss “Us Us” to the shore all day. Where’s the kid called Kateydid? the moonfaced Kewpiedoll? The excitable pouting Zookie? The somber O-Be-Joyful? Lost girl, playing hopscotch, I will do what you could. Name of father, son, ghost. Cross my heart and hope. While the sea’s jewels build shells and shells change to chalk and chalk to loam and gold wheat grows where oceans teetered.