Growing Up

By Anna Whitescarver

I asked the river where it was going. 

Going up. 

Growing up? I asked. She was already gone. 

 

I started to walk home, but forgot the way and stumbled in the dark.

Luckily, I fell onto a bed of four-leaf clovers. 

Lucky me, I fell onto a four-poster bed. 

 

I was struck by the shape of my hip bones as I laid flat on the earth. 

I lied, flat on the earth. 

I turned to the river and said I wish my hip bones were pearls and I was an oyster. 

She shook her head and laughed and splashed over rocks and told me 

Drop pearls on gold hoops are just scabs from a fall on your bike. 

 

I cried crocodile tears that floated up and away from my face. 

They mixed with the morning mist and the sun was rising. 

A flutter of sparrows clouded my vision so I couldn’t tell

if the clouds were spinning 

or if my head was. 

 

I was bound by nothing but the river, so I continued along her path. 

I dropped a thousand buttons as I went — hoping to retrace my route. 

But that’s been done a thousand times and, when I ran out of buttons, 

I realized I hadn’t dropped any at all. 

 

I slipped into a clearing beyond the river, full of shiny items from afar. 

A bag of hard sugar, my old shin guards. The locket of my mother’s that I lost as a child.

Timekeeping devices, an old blue pen tucked into Hemingway. Cloth napkins. 

Am I in heaven? I asked the locket. 

 

My little gray cat curled around my ankles 

and said everything would be okay. 

I told her I wasn’t ready and she slept smiling in the sun. 

Ready for what? 

I tried to flip the hourglass upside down. 

I want my baby teeth back! 

And my old dead dog! 

 

But the sand kept falling through, 

as if it hadn’t heard me at all.