Childhood, Girlhood, and Youth

A Poem by Anna Veronica

This is a poem I wrote about growing up with my cousin. Now that we are older, I feel in a way closer to him, but also as if I cannot communicate with him as purely as before.

In the old days, you would lead:
Your hugs around my neck like strangulation,
Your fingers twisting and pressing mine
As I built your Lego men.
Under the afternoon sun we stole hiking sticks,
Sparred on the lawn till your staff’s knotted tip
Thudded against my collarbone,
And our parents called us in.
It was ground into me, then,
That you were my superior,
Not because you were taller or stronger—for you were not—
But merely because you were older, and a boy.
I worshipped every fiber of you:
Your smooth chestnut cup of hair,
Your myopic dark eyes,
The tender cookie-dough skin of your forearms,
Your lips as they struggled to hide white puerile teeth.
All this glazed over into an idol, a gold statue.

Later, when I thought I was perhaps your equal,
You upped your pace.
You ate salads and lifted weights,
And I fought; I told myself that I was worthy.
You could throw a football across the lawn,
But I could carry the football between my toes.
You did sit-ups and swung on the rafters,
But I did not need to work at being thin.
Every word that you let fall, I caught and crushed
Until it fit the warped mold of my palm.
Your languid drawl could not keep up with my subtle words,
And my serpentine tongue hooked your skin,
Tearing it layer by layer
Until your raw guts were laid bare.

It was only when I cleaved my sphere away from yours,
When I realized that I did not have to run your path,
But could blaze my own, walk it at my own pace,
No longer your subjugate, no longer chained to your ankle;
It was when I saw you as a person
That I began to love you.
I understood that you grew your hair to your shoulders
In order to rebel, and I knew that your fresh curly goatee
Was just another way to hide your weak chin,
But I admired the quiet honesty of your eyes,
The way you could keep your lips together,
The way your countenance betrayed no anger.
I could do other things,
Things that you could not fathom,
And in my universe I was happy.
But as my love for you grew, so did the canyon between us,
For I was wearing not your hand-me-downs,
But clothing I had made.
My leaf had branched away from your stem.
One night nearly brought us together:
You were annoyed at something, and we stood in the kitchen,
A 2 A.M. commiseration, nodded heads, fluttering whispers,
And a bowl of ice cream between us.
Our spoons, together, ground the sandpaper bottom of the bowl,
Then let the slick oyster clumps of mint chocolate chip melt against our gums.
When we returned to the basement, you sat before the VCR;
I knelt beside your couch, wishing that I could rest my cheek
Against the bone of your elbow and fall asleep that way.
But I could not.
Was it because of your stolid mouth,
Your narrowed brow,
Your unmoving face,
Or because a sliver of me still worshipped you?