WHAT I FOUND CLEANING OUT MY CHILDHOOD BEROOM

KhiraMoore CollegeSophomore EmersonCollege

An old middle school yearbook

Metal mouth, four-eyed

With hair so wild, the kids called it a lion’s mane

When I was just a black girl on a rainy day with no umbrella

On the bottom shelf of my bookcase

There are mornings spent at the scholastic book fair

Every reader’s favorite day of the year

The only day, it was cool to be me

While others bought dinosaur erasers and glow-in-the-dark sticky putty

I left with eight new paperbacks and 20 dollars less than when I started

The boys who taunted me had the nerve to ask for handouts

On my side table, there’s a pink jewelry box

Circa Christmas 2010

The ballerina used to twirl and sing the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little star

She lays in the drawer with 3DS games

And old friendship bracelets from girls I haven’t seen in five years

Sometimes when it’s dark and the monster under my bed is asleep

I can hear her cry, her tune muffled by a horrifying shudder

A graphic explosion of agony

Begging to twirl again

I wish I knew how to fix her I’m older now, the world has opened its arms A great, beautiful life farther than playing with dolls So I tossed her away With the remnants of a childhood, now dead to me

Now it seems the monster cries too Like I, the monster mourns the dead