The Month of June: 13 1/2

As our daughter approaches graduation and puberty at the same time, at her own, calm, deliberate, serious rate, she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her hands, thrust out her hipbones, chant I’m great! I’m great! She feels 8th grade coming open around her, a chrysalis cracking and letting her out, it falls behind her and joins the other husks on the ground, 7th grade, 6th grade, the magenta rind of 5th grade, the hard jacket of 4th when she had so much pain, 3rd grade, 2nd, the dim cocoon of 1st grade back there somewhere on the path, and kindergarten like a strip of thumb-suck blanket taken from the actual blanket they wrapped her in at birth. The whole school is coming off her shoulders like a cloak unclasped, and she dances forth in her jerky sexy child’s joke dance of self, self, her throat tight and a hard new song coming out of it, while her two dark eyes shine above her body like a good mother and a good father who look down and love everything their baby does, the way she lives their love.