Lucky Girl

Oh, I envied you (if you were even real at all).

I have to be honest that in recent years

The evidence of your existence evaporates

Until my idea of you becomes a non-entity; a figment; a fable.

I wanted to be like you once, to know your fortune and stability.

I yearned to ask you about unconditional love and unquestioned support.

I have laid in my bed singing myself to sleep as a child.

I envisioned what it was like for you with someone else to sing, stroking your hair while you fell asleep without a single worry or care.

I could have listened to you talk all day about your father and how he looks at you proudly,

Like you could do no wrong or could be no more fascinating or capable or fun to him than anyone else he ever met.

Did he come home for dinner where you all sat, laughing and sharing, and ask you about your day? Did he tell you he was proud? That he wished he could be brave like you? Or kind?

Was your mom soothing like I imagined? I used to think she probably told you that you looked beautiful no matter what you wore and that you deserved better and that you didn’t have to settle.

Did she laugh with confidence and demand respect and choose in your father a loving and good man, so you would learn to do this as well?

But years passed and I can’t find you. I can’t find you in my family. Not one. I can’t find you in my friends.

Broken boys have dropped their toys and fallen in love with the likes of you. But broken boys break more than toys and their charm hangs on a hook by the front door.

In the isolation of households, broken boys break broken girls and broken girls break themselves by bending so far for others that they forget they are not made of clay.

I am not so unlucky, this girl. For everything I wished I’d had, I somehow learned to make. I give it away like crumbs for birds, because that is what you do, and it feels good.