Babes in Toyland

I was eleven when the casting director said I would become
A soldier. In the play, I would wear the red suit & so, too, would my friend. We were always
queer, and we loved the lapels and the buttons, even the black coal strap under our warbling
chins. We giggled and laughed and were rarely onstage; that was saved for the high school kids.
We were still babes, and we got cast with older kids, watched them memorize their lines, while
we stood on the sidelines sometimes, and guarded them.

I still remember sprawling out with snacks for days: poptarts crumbled on napkins, the blanket
her mom gave us– the goldfish and the grapes and the juice boxes. Thought of how my mom
actually paid good money for us to be fed, to be in this play, as if she was proud of us. Usually,
she bought a gallon of milk, some eggs– popcorn, salsa, chips. Things that would stretch. Not
individual packages that we would slurp down while talking about going to the pool later, flip
flops and snorkels, finding each other under the water, cascading bubbles towards each other.
Her neon orange bikini that I still remember, but she told me it was a tankini, like her name:
Tani. Tani, tankini, two, tandem. I dreamt in genders of ts, and I acted in plays on the sidelines,
and I wanted summer to find me, scorch me, and blister me found once again.

Those summers, I genuinely thought days meant going to become someone you’re not were the
way to fall into autumn:
Slurping juice boxes and laughing as it dribbles down your chin–
Buttons of boy soldiers put on girls who want to look different than they are (no skirts, no tennis
bracelets, no polo-pink hollister–)
Going to the pool later, wanting to hold my friend’s hand, but thinking,
Just thinking – that like the juice box squished into my hoodie pocket– hoping the box wouldn’t
gush, hoping I’d gotten away with stealing a moment I loved, held in this thing I would drink
once, but I would savor–

I’d save it for home,
I’d save it for later.