Member Poem

I was fifteen.
A girl, about age six, held between pink mittens her art project:
cardboard laden with glued-on elbow macaroni, glitter, yarn.
When the bus took off, a boy decided to snatch it, rip off the macaroni
and throw them at the crying girl.

The bus driver’s eyes in the mirror suggested I should handle this.
Stop it! only made him run up and down the aisle mock-screaming help, help.
I became the girl whose world had been crushed
while I also remained fifteen.

I shoved the boy into a seat and told him about the boy who cried wolf,
describing blood and teeth.
I should have stopped,
but I said no one cared the boy was dead,
the village was happier without him, and I kept ranting,
telling the boy no one would love him, not even his own mother,
until we turned into each other—
he the crying girl and me the tormentor.

I will say this: afterward he left the girl alone.
But I can’t make peace with how my inner surge of power felt,
for a moment,
like winning.

Published in Furious Gazelle.