ON THE HILL

Grade 9

BaltimoreCityCollege

MayaWalker CollegeFirstYear ChathamUniversity

“They sat there, feeling happy together.”

- Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad are Friends

Because sea is only a shelter to those afraid of love,

I cry crocodile tears for the first frog to break my heart. They say

I’m over my head in water, that all I need is a good cry, for my tears to touch sea, but I know better, know these lilypads like the back of my webbed feet.

On land, someone tells me not to kiss a toad, that if I do warts will erupt from my mouth and I want to tell them how toads cry the same salty brine of the ocean, how when I say I cannot love again, what I mean is I cannot love yet. I want to tell them that if desire means warts, perhaps we all deserve to be marked by love. Toads know what it means to be marked, and perhaps that is why she loved me. We are surrounded by rain, under shelter despite our skin when she first kisses me, and I discover what it means to be amphibious, to exist in two places at once.