Today is Flag Day,
and Mama hung a flag on the front porch.
It curled in the breeze like a cat’s tail.
Today is also my birthday.
We had lemon meringue pie
instead of cake because that’s my favorite,
and Neapolitan ice cream,
because I can never decide which flavor I like best.
Papa turned on the sprinkler,
and Stacey and I did ballet leaps and bunny hops
through the spray.
Then Mama and Papa gave me a hi-fi record player,
and Stacey gave me the new Temptations album.
I asked them if they had planned it that way,
and everyone laughed and looked away
so I knew the answer was yes. It made me happy
that they had talked behind my back
in a nice way.
Then Timothy came over with a present.
He glanced at Papa and handed me a little box
with COTTLE’S written on the lid.
Inside was a happy silver moon on a chain.
Stacey is staying over tonight.
It’s my first sleepover
since Shelley and Sharon and I slept on their living room floor
and watched The Flying Nun and Bewitched
the night before Mama and I left Berkeley.
Stacey and I are sitting at the two window seats
and talking through the screens. We can hear each other
inside and out.
“Just think,” she says,
“you’ve been on this earth thirteen years.”
I look up at the sky and wish
new moons had names, like full moons do.
I will call tonight’s moon New Birthday Moon.
When I opened the box from Timothy today,
he said, “Look—I found your moon.”
I am thirteen today,
and the moon that disappeared
from my science project
and from tonight’s sky
is here, dangling at my throat.