The Girl Grew and Grew, Her Mother Couldn’t Stop It

The girl grew and grew, her mother couldn’t stop it; it terrorized. What would the finger-dance do? Kindergarten art a buffet of 
markers, gluings of stuffs to seasonally-keyed paper, Elmer’s pools drying clear. A stapling and testing of cylinders versus spheres versus cubes for kinetic and entropic possibilities, stuffing balled newspaper into paper-bag dragons, two sweet silver elephants with heads too small and trunks too long, situated off-center, snuffling flowers. And silver rain. And 16 silver hearts stacked vertically and strips of masking tape, colored in reverse rainbow. Unnamable tendrils diffusing to scribbles. A bird. Another bird, more rain, peace signs, a horse with sideways-flowing mane, and knowledge: that the sky’s full of black-struck M s and W s, drifting clouds; that her kitty cats watch sunsets; sky doesn’t reach down to meet the earth; mother shrinks to the size of a penis.